Molecular dynamics simulation of thermal transport across solid/liquid interface created by meniscus

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics and finite element methods to explore how the three-phase contact line affects heat transfer at solid/liquid interfaces, revealing key parameters for multiscale thermal management modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a multiscale approach linking atomistic simulations with continuum mechanics to analyze thermal transport across nanosized menisci.

Findings

Three-phase contact line decreases interfacial boundary resistance.

Wetting angle influences heat transfer efficiency.

Finite element modeling complements molecular dynamics results.

Abstract

Understandings heat transfer across a solid/liquid interface is important to develop new pathways to improve thermal management in various energy applications. One of the important questions that arises in this context is the impact of three-phase contact line between solid, liquid and gas on the perturbations of the heat fluxes at the nanoscale. Therefore, this paper is devoted to the investigations of features of thermal transport across nanosized meniscus constrained between two solid walls. Different wetting states of the meniscus were considered with molecular dynamics approach by the variation of the interactional potential between atoms of the substrate and the liquid. The effect of the size of the meniscus on the exchange of energy between two solid walls was also investigated. It was shown that the presence of a three phase contact line leads to a decrease of the interfacial boundary resistance between solid and liquid. Further, investigations with the finite element method were used to link atomistic simulations with the continuum mechanics. We demonstrate that the wetting angle and the interfacial boundary resistance are the required key-parameters to perform multiscale simulations of such engineering problems with an accurate microscale parametrization.