Thermal Interfacial Resistance Reduction Between Metal and Dielectric Materials by Inserting Intermediate Metal Layer

In this work, we have observed 60% reduction in total interfacial resistance by adding an intermediate metal layer nickel between gold and aluminum oxide. Two temperature model is applied to explain the change of interfacial resistance, including both lattice mismatch with diffuse mismatch model and electron-phonon coupling effect. Simulation result agrees reasonably well with experimental data. Even though interfacial resistance due to electron-phonon coupling effect for Au-aluminum oxide is much larger than that of Ni-aluminum oxide interface, lattice mismatch is still the dominant factor for interfacial resistance.