Temperature dependence of thermal resistance at a solid/liquid interface

Abstract

Abstract Using nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, we discuss the temperature dependence of the interfacial thermal resistance which is still inconsistent in literature. Interfaces with different wettabilities are employed which are characterized by the strength of solid/liquid interaction. For all the interfaces, the simulation results reveal that the interfacial thermal resistance decreases with temperature in a form of R K ∝ T − α , and the index α is larger for interface with weaker solid/liquid interaction. Analysis of the density profile of the liquid near the interface shows that the wettability-related temperature dependence of Kapitza resistance could be attributed to the stronger temperature dependence of the layering structure of liquid phase at more hydrophobic surfaces. Moreover, the interfacial thermal resistance is almost independent of the heat flux magnitude and direction for interfaces between nonpolar fluid and solid atoms. The thermal rectification, which was reported at interfaces between water and solid due to the hydrogen bonds in water, is not observed in current interfaces composed of nonpolar fluid and solid atoms. Keywords: Kapitza resistancemolecular dynamics simulationtemperature dependencesurface wettability Acknowledgements This work is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.51076078) and the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2009CB219805). The computations are carried out at the Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology, China.