Molecular dynamics study of the influence of wall-gas interactions on heat flow in nanochannels

Abstract

Especially at the nanometer scale interfaces play an important role. The effect of the wettability on the solid-liquid interface has already been studied with molecular dynamics. In this paper we study the dependence of wetting on the solid-gas interface for different density gases and investigate the influence of wetting on the heat transport properties over such an interface using molecular dynamics. Subsequently we show how the flow profile of a gas flowing along a surface also depends on this wettability. These simulations show that wettability increases the conductivity of a solid to a stationary gas and decreases the flow velocity near the interface for a gas flow. These two effects influence the cooling of a solid achieved by a cold gas flowing along its surface in opposite ways. However, we show that a higher wettability has a positive net effect on the cooling, explaining experimental results that showed an increased heat cooling effect of hydrophilic over hydrophobic microchannels.