# Thermal Conductivity Enhancement by Surface Electromagnetic Waves Propagating along Multilayered Structures with Asymmetric Surrounding Media

## TL;DR

This paper develops analytical models for surface electromagnetic waves in multilayered nanostructures to enhance thermal conductivity, enabling efficient design of nano-devices with improved heat management.

## Contribution

It derives analytical expressions for SEWs in multilayered structures, guiding optimal configurations for thermal conductivity enhancement using genetic algorithms.

## Key findings

- Achieved SEW thermal conductivity of 1.27 W/m·K, 90% of bulk glass.
- Identified key factors influencing SEW-based thermal conductivity.
- Provided a fast analytical method for designing thermally efficient nanostructures.

## Abstract

Enhancement of thermal conductivity via surface electromagnetic waves (SEWs) supported in nanostructures has recently drawn attention as a remedy for issues raised due to the reduction of thermal conductivity in nanoscale confinement. Among them, multilayered structures on a substrate are prevalent in nano-sized systems, such as electronic nanodevices, meaning that analysis on those structures is indispensable. In this work, three basic multilayered structures are selected and the analytical expressions for SEWs supported in each structure are derived. This analytical approach enables us to figure out which factors are crucial for enhancing SEW thermal conductivity using multilayers. It is also found that the solution can be extended to various materials and provide the guidelines on which configurations are desirable for increasing the thermal conductivity. Furthermore, the analytical solutions reduce the calculation time significantly such that the optimal configuration, which can additionally yield SEW thermal conductivity of 1.27 W/m$\cdot$K corresponding to 90\% of the thermal conductivity of bulk glass, is found with the genetic algorithm. This study thus provides a new method for efficiently managing thermal issues in nano-sized devices.