Engineering Nanoscale Thermal Transport: Size- and Spacing-Dependent Cooling of Nanostructures

Thermal transport at the nanoscale is much slower than plain diffusive transport in the bulk, and has only lately become experimentally accessible. This limits the informed design of nanosystems for $e.g.$ heat management in nanoelectronics, or killing cancer cells using laser-heated nanoparticles. Using ultrafast pulses of short-wavelength light, the authors map the continuous transition from isolated heat sources that cool slowly to closely spaced heat sources that can cool quickly. This improvement in heat transfer simply by tuning geometry carries important implications for the design of functional nanostructures.