Pulsative heating of silicon thin film resembling laser pulses

•Analytical solution well predicts temperature jump at film boundaries.•Temperature decay along film thickness becomes almost linear for late heating period.•Temporal variation of temperature does not follow temperature pulses introduced.•Low temperature edge of the film acts like phonon sink. Thermal response of thin films under pulse heating, resembling laser pulses, is considered and the semi-analytical solution of phonon radiative transport is presented. Temperature pulsation is introduced at the film edge resembling the laser pulses and silicon thin film is used as the film material. Since the film thickness is comparable to the mean free path of silicon, equation for radiative phonon transport is incorporated in the analysis. Temperature findings from the semi-analytical solution are compared to that obtained from the numerical solution. Equivalent equilibrium temperature is introduced to quantify the phonon intensity distribution in the film. It is found that equivalent equilibrium temperature obtained from the semi-analytical solution agrees well with its counterpart obtained from the numerical simulations. The semi-analytical solution correctly predicts the temperature jump at the film edges. The semi-analytical solution reduces the computation efforts significantly in terms of run time and memory size, which are required for the numerical simulations. Temporal distribution of temperature inside the film at various locations does not follow exactly the temperature pulses introduced at one edge of the silicon film.