Justin L. Smoyer

Dr. Justin Smoyer is an experimental physicist and engineer working in the field of nanoscale heat transfer and is the founder and director of the Kutztown University Nanoscale Thermal Sciences Laboratory (KU-NTSL). Working at length scales on the order of nanometers (more than 1000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair) the traditional laws of heat transfer physics are less applicable and one must give special consideration to the individual heat carriers themselves. This realm of heat transfer is probed and studied using an on-campus laser based frequency domain thermoreflectance (FDTR) system. The FDTR apparatus is a dual laser measurement system that allows thin film samples to be simultaneously heated and probed at frequencies from kilohertz to megahertz in an effort to study the heat transfer properties, particularly the flow of heat across boundaries of dissimilar materials.

The continued miniaturization of modern electronic devices coupled with the ever present demand for peak performance is driving thermal engineering from a design afterthought to a design necessity in the fabrication of the very building blocks of technology, the transistor. Dr. Smoyer's research focuses on understanding how the integration of fabrication materials affects thermal performance and how real world conditions will impact device performance and lifetime.