Thermal transport in a semiconductor heterostructure measured by time-resolved x-ray diffraction

We report studies of thermal transport across the interface of a semiconductor heterostructure using x-ray diffraction to measure the time-dependent lattice expansion after ultrafast laser excitation. Femtosecond laser pulses are used to rapidly and locally heat the substrate at the buried interface of an Al0.3Ga0.7As/GaAs heterostructure grown by molecular-beam epitaxy. High-resolution time-resolved x-ray diffraction is used to study the heating and cooling of the film and substrate independently. The data are compared with a simple model for the thermal transport incorporated into dynamical diffraction calculations allowing us to extract the room-temperature cross-plane film thermal conductivity. The value is 40% lower than that extrapolated from prior results on liquid-phase epitaxy grown samples of varying concentrations.