Phononic transport and simulations of annealing processes in nanometric complex structures

Modeling thermal transport at the nanoscale is a difficult task, especially when external time-varying heating sources and the complexity of the studied systems make computational schemes that rely on accurate particlelike simulations nonaffordable. Alternative strategies based on corrections of the Fourier law could satisfy the trade-off between accuracy and computational efficiency, since they can be implemented in partial differential equation solvers. This continuum approach could also allow for the coupling between thermal transport and other evolving fields related to the generalized temperature field. Here we demonstrate that corrections due to the finite phonon mean free paths can be suitably included in annealing process simulations of three-dimensional nanosystems. Quantitative predictions can be obtained and readily compared with the experimental characterization of the processed samples.