ITCC & ITES 2024 Conference

Dr. Joshua Martin is an expert in thermal and electrical transport measurements and instrumentation, focusing on semiconductors and energy materials. His research aims to improve measurement methods, instrumentation, and reference materials for microelectronics and energy conversion applications.

Dr. Martin is well-known for his work in thermoelectric materials used in waste heat recovery and solid-state refrigeration. He has designed and constructed a number of scientific instruments that characterize fundamental properties of bulk and thin film materials with improved measurement speed, accuracy, and reliability. These instruments allowed his team to devise new metrologies, protocols, and models to correct previously unknown or long-ignored sources of errors, resulting in a series of protocol papers describing best measurement practices.

His contributions include developing two Standard Reference Materials for instrument validation, standardizing measurement protocols, and both leading and participating in several international interlaboratory studies on thermal and electrical transport properties. Dr. Martin has received several awards for his work, including the 2021 Department of Commerce Silver Medal Award and the 2014 Department of Commerce Bronze Medal Award.

Dr. Martin’s expertise will provide valuable insights into advancing measurement science for semiconductors and energy conversion technologies at the ITCC.

He will present Development of Thermal Conductivity Reference Materials and host the Thermoreflectance Instrumentation and Methods Workshop.

Abstract:

The thermal properties of materials and interfaces that govern the performance, reliability, and thermal management in semiconductor devices are not fully or easily characterized. Researchers use a variety of techniques to measure thermal properties in this application space and no practical standards currently exist to validate and compare these complex measurements. Thermal reference materials that do exist lack usability due to dimensions or property ranges that are incompatible with current industry tools. Research Grade Test Materials (RGTMs) are a new pre-standards development tool from the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) that provide researchers with no-cost homogenous materials for instrument validation and the reliable interlaboratory comparison of data. We will present our efforts to develop a suite of thermal conductivity RGTMs that span the property value ranges and dimensions relevant for materials used in semiconductor microelectronics and detail how RGTMs fit within the umbrella of standards. We will share the results of a recent online thermal standards survey we conducted to identify and prioritize candidate reference materials, ranges of property values, preferred sample geometry, and prominent measurement techniques. Respondents include contacts from the semiconductor industry, commercial thermal measurement instrument vendors, national and international government laboratories, and academia.

David R. Clarke is the inaugural holder of the Extended Tarr Family Professor of Materials in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge, a B.Sc. in Applied Sciences from Sussex University and was awarded a ScD from the University of Cambridge.

A member of the National Academy of Engineering since 1999, he is also a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Ceramic Society, and received an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Scientist Award in 1993.

He shared the 2008 Japanese NIMS Award for Recent Breakthroughs in Materials Science for Energy and Environment, is a Distinguished Life Member of the American Ceramic Society and was recently listed as author of one of the 11 best papers in the 110 years of publications on ceramics and glasses.

His long-term interests in materials range from the fundamentals to the applied, from ceramics to metals to semiconductors and polymers. He has published over 450 papers in areas of materials ranging from thermal barrier coatings, to dielectric elastomers to fundamentals of oxidation to microelectronics reliability and the electrical and optical properties of ZnO and GaN. 

At Harvard, he enjoys interacting with students at all levels, from teaching Freshman seminars on “Glass” and  “Materials, Energy and Society”, graduate courses in composites and deformation of materials and the new undergraduate course in SEAS on “Fundamentals of Heat Transfer”, a required course for students studying Mechanical Engineering.

He will present “Thermal Radiation Effects in Materials.”

*The above biography was originally published on https://clarke.seas.harvard.edu/people/david-r-clarke