Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2011
Network Identification by Deconvolution (NID) method is used to capture the heat cumulative effect in the homodyne configuration of the Pump-Probe Transient Thermoreflectance (PPTTR) experiment. This cumulative effect is very important in the interpretation of the PPTTR which is becoming widely used for the extraction of thin film thermal conductivity. We show that this intrinsic behavior can be introduced as a cumulative effect weight function in the time constant spectrum of the structure under study. We show how the main features of this weight function change when we change the laser repetition rate and/or the laser pump beam modulation frequency, and how these changes may affect the extraction of the thermal properties of the sample under study, particularly the thermal conductivity and the interface thermal resistance. Numerical simulations of the PPTTR experiment are used to validate the application of NID method. Limitations of the method will also be discussed.