Thermal Property Measurement of Semiconductor Melt Using Modified Laser Flash Method

This study further develops the standard laser flash method for the measurement of multiple thermal properties of semiconductor melts. The standard laser flash method is widely used to measure thermal diffusivity of solids. Our modified procedure allows thermal diffusivity, thermal conductivity, and specific heat capacity of molten semiconductor material to be determined simultaneously. The transient heat transfer process in the melt and its quartz container was computationally studied in detail. A fitting procedure based on the numerical result and the least root-mean-square error fitting to the experimental data was used to extract thermal diffusivity, specific heat capacity, and thermal conductivity. The results for tellurium (Te) at 873 K: specific heat capacity 300.2 J/kg K, thermal conductivity 3.50 W/m K, thermal diffusivity 2.04×10−6 m2/s, are in good agreement with data published in the literature. Furthermore, uncertainty analysis showed quantitatively the effect of sample geometry, transient temperature measured, and the energy of the laser pulse on the results.