Heat dissipation and thermometry in nanosystems: When interfaces dominate

The technological need for characterization of scaled nano-devices is not paralleled with the availability of methods to measure heat flux and temperature on small scales. To measure local temperature and conductance variation we therefore focus on developing measurement tools. These are based on (A) scanning a thermometer across the sample surface region of interest, so called scanning thermal microscopy (SThM), (B) measuring thermal properties directly through self-heating, and (C) measuring directly the heat-flux through 1D-structures.