Enhanced Thermal Transport through Soft Glassy Nano-disc Paste

TL;DR

This study investigates heat diffusion in a soft glassy Laponite suspension, revealing significant thermal diffusivity enhancement at low concentrations despite constrained particle motion, linked to microstructure effects.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence of enhanced thermal transport in soft glassy nano-disc suspensions and correlates it with microstructural characteristics.

Findings

Thermal diffusivity increases at low Laponite concentrations.

Despite constrained Brownian motion, heat transport is significantly enhanced.

Microstructure influences thermal transport properties.

Abstract

We study diffusion of heat in an aqueous suspension of disc shaped nanoparticles of Laponite, which has finite elasticity and paste-like consistency, by using the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. We estimate the thermal diffusivity of the suspension by comparing the experimentally obtained temperature distribution to that with analytical solution. We observe that despite highly constrained Brownian diffusivity of particles owing to its soft glassy nature, suspensions at very small concentrations of Laponite demonstrates significant enhancement in thermal diffusivity. We correlate the observed enhancement with the possible microstructures of the Laponite suspension.