Thermal transport at sub-micron scales differs substantially from that at normal length scales. Physical laws for heat transfer, such as Fourier's law for heat conduction, fail when the mean free path of energy carriers becomes comparable to the length scales of interest. This occurs in modern microelectronic devices, where for example, channel dimensions, now below 100 nm in length, are comparable to the mean free path of phonons in silicon at room temperature. Research in the nanoscale thermal transport area addresses novel physics at small length and time scales and novel technologies that exploit this class of physics.

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