Scanning thermal microscopy of carbon nanotubes using batch-fabricated probes

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Abstract
We have designed and batch-fabricated thin-film thermocouple cantilever probes for scanning thermal microscopy (SThM). Here, we report the use of these probes for imaging the phonon temperature distribution of electrically heated carbon-nanotube (CN) circuits. The SThM images reveal possible heat dissipation mechanisms in CN circuits. The experiments also demonstrate that heat flow through the tip-sample nanoscale junction under ambient conditions is dominated by conduction through a liquid film bridging the two surfaces. With the spatial resolution limited by tip radius to about 50 nm, SThM now offers the promising prospects of studying electron-phonon interactions and phonon transport in low dimensional nanostructures.