The role of interfacial nonidealities and disorder on thermal transport across interfaces is traditionally assumed to add resistance to heat transfer, decreasing the thermal boundary conductance (TBC). However, recent computational studies have suggested that interfacial defects can enhance this thermal boundary conductance through the emergence of unique vibrational modes intrinsic to the material interface and defect atoms, a finding that contradicts traditional theory and conventional understanding. By manipulating the local heat flux of atomic vibrations that comprise these interfacial modes, in principle, the TBC can be increased. In this work, experimental evidence is provided that interfacial defects can enhance the TBC across interfaces through the emergence of unique high-frequency vibrational modes that arise from atomic mass defects at the interface with relatively small masses. Ultrahigh TBC is demonstrated at amorphous SiOC:H/SiC:H interfaces, approaching 1 GW m K and are further increased through the introduction of nitrogen defects. The fact that disordered interfaces can exhibit such high conductances, which can be further increased with additional defects, offers a unique direction to manipulate heat transfer across materials with high densities of interfaces by controlling and enhancing interfacial thermal transport.
While current descriptions of thermal transport exist for well-ordered solids, i.e., crystal lattices, new methods are needed to describe thermal transport in systems with lack of symmetry such as structurally/compositionally disordered solids and interfaces. In this tutorial, we discuss the formalism, implementation, and application of two recently developed methods, Green-Kubo modal analysis and interface conductance modal analysis, to predict the thermal conductivity and thermal interface conductance, respectively. Specifically, these methods enable the prediction of phonon contributions to transport in crystalline materials with any level of defects, up through fully amorphous solids, dilute to fully random alloys, molecules, nanostructures, and across interfaces involving any of these material classes-all within a single and unified perspective. This tutorial article not only describes the methods, but also provides example codes that can be used for their direct implementation. The design and functionality of the codes is also discussed in order to reduce the barrier to more extensive utilization of these approaches by others.
Heat is fundamental to power generation and many industrial processes, and is most useful at high temperatures because it can be converted more efficiently to other types of energy. However, efficient transportation, storage and conversion of heat at extreme temperatures (more than about 1,300 kelvin) is impractical for many applications. Liquid metals can be very effective media for transferring heat at high temperatures, but liquid-metal pumping has been limited by the corrosion of metal infrastructures. Here we demonstrate a ceramic, mechanical pump that can be used to continuously circulate liquid tin at temperatures of around 1,473-1,673 kelvin. Our approach to liquid-metal pumping is enabled by the use of ceramics for the mechanical and sealing components, but owing to the brittle nature of ceramics their use requires careful engineering. Our set-up enables effective heat transfer using a liquid at previously unattainable temperatures, and could be used for thermal storage and transport, electric power production, and chemical or materials processing.
Abstract:We used molecular dynamics simulations, the Green-Kubo Modal Analysis (GKMA) method and sonification to study the modal contributions to thermal conductivity in individual polythiophene chains. The simulations suggest that it is possible to achieve divergent thermal conductivity and the GKMA method allowed for exact pinpointing of the modes responsible for the anomalous behavior. The analysis showed that transverse vibrations in the plane of the aromatic rings at low frequencies ~ 0.05 THz are primarily responsible. Further investigation showed that the divergence arises from persistent correlation between the three lowest frequency modes on chains. Sonification of the mode heat fluxes revealed regions where the heat flux amplitude yields a somewhat sinusoidal envelope with a long period similar to the relaxation time. This characteristic in the divergent mode heat fluxes gives rise to the overall thermal conductivity divergence, which strongly supports earlier hypotheses that attribute the divergence to correlated phonon-phonon scattering/interactions.
Main text:In all substances, energy/heat is transferred through atomic motions. In electrically conductive materials, electrons can become the primary heat carriers, but in all phases of matter, atomic motions are always present and contribute to the thermal conductivity of every object. Here, we use the term "object" instead of "material" to emphasize that thermal conductivity is highly dependent on the actual structure of an object, that is, its internal atomic level structure and its larger nanoscale or microscale geometry [1][2][3][4][5][6] . In studying the physics of thermal conductivity, tremendous progress has been made over the last 20 years toward understanding various mechanisms that allow one to reduce thermal conductivity in solids 1,7 . This reduction is generally measured relative to a theoretical upper limiting maximum value that arises solely from the intrinsic anharmonicity within the interactions between atoms.In the limiting case, where the atomic interactions are perfectly harmonic, thermal conductivity tends to infinity because the normal modes of vibration do not interact, thus yielding effectively infinite phonon mean free paths and thermal conductivity. As a result, the notion of anharmonicity is critical, and perfectly harmonic interactions between atoms are physically unreasonable. This is because an asymmetry in the energetic well between atoms is an inherent consequence of finite bonding energy (e.g., at some point, the potential energy surface must become concave down). Although one can approach the harmonic limit at cryogenic temperatures, the notion that divergent thermal conductivity (e.g., anomalous thermal conductivity) might be realizable in a real material at room temperature seems theoretically impossible. However, in 1955 Fermi, Pasta, and Ulam (FPU) 8 made a "shocking little discovery" that even an anharmonic system can exhibit infinite thermal conductivity.FPU conducted a numerical experiment with a one-dimensio...
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