Simultaneous measurements of the specific heat and thermal conductivity of suspended thin samples by transient electrothermal method Rev. Sci. Instrum. 80, 064901 (2009); When installing thermal interface material (TIM) between heat source and sink to reduce contact thermal resistance, the interfacial thermal resistance (ITR) between the TIM and heat source/sink may become important, especially when the TIM thickness becomes smaller in the next-generation device integration. To this end, we

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... investigated ITR between TIM and aluminum surface by using the timedomain thermoreflectance method. The measurements reveal large ITR attributed to the depletion of filler particles in TIM adjacent to the aluminum surface. The thickness of the depletion layer is estimated to be about 100 nm. As a consequence, the fraction of ITR to the total contact thermal resistance becomes about 20% when the TIM thickness is about 50 µm (current thickness), and it exceeds 50% when the thickness is smaller than 10 µm (next-generation thickness). C 2016 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).