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We use molecular dynamics simulations and the lattice-based scattering boundary method to compute the thermal conductance of finite-length Lennard-Jones superlattice junctions confined by bulk crystalline leads. The superlattice junction thermal conductance depends on the properties of the leads. For junctions with a superlattice period of four atomic monolayers at temperatures between 5 and 20 K, those with mass-mismatched leads have a greater thermal conductance than those with mass-matched leads. We attribute this lead effect to interference between and the ballistic transport of emergent junction vibrational modes. The lead effect diminishes when the temperature is increased, when the superlattice period is increased, and when interfacial disorder is introduced, but is reversed in the harmonic limit. C 2015 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

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Based on a recent result showing that the net Coulomb potential in condensed ionic systems is rather short ranged, an exact and physically transparent method permitting the evaluation of the Coulomb potential by direct summation over the r−1 Coulomb pair potential is presented. The key observation is that the problems encountered in determining the Coulomb energy by pairwise, spherically truncated r−1 summation are a direct consequence of the fact that the system summed over is practically never neutral. A simple method is developed that achieves charge neutralization wherever the r−1 pair potential is truncated. This enables the extraction of the Coulomb energy, forces, and stresses from a spherically truncated, usually charged environment in a manner that is independent of the grouping of the pair terms. The close connection of our approach with the Ewald method is demonstrated and exploited, providing an efficient method for the simulation of even highly disordered ionic systems by direct, pairwise r−1 summation with spherical truncation at rather short range, i.e., a method which fully exploits the short-ranged nature of the interactions in ionic systems. The method is validated by simulations of crystals, liquids, and interfacial systems, such as free surfaces and grain boundaries.

The cross-plane thermal conductivity of thin films of WSe2 grown from alternating W and Se layers is as small as 0.05 watts per meter per degree kelvin at room temperature, 30 times smaller than the c-axis thermal conductivity of single-crystal WSe2 and a factor of 6 smaller than the predicted minimum thermal conductivity for this material. We attribute the ultralow thermal conductivity of these disordered, layered crystals to the localization of lattice vibrations induced by the random stacking of two-dimensional crystalline WSe2 sheets. Disordering of the layered structure by ion bombardment increases the thermal conductivity.

The enormous amount of basic research into carbon nanotubes has sparked interest in the potential applications of these novel materials. One promising use of carbon nanotubes is as fillers in a composite material to improve mechanical behaviour, electrical transport and thermal transport. For composite materials with high thermal conductivity, the thermal conductance across the nanotube-matrix interface is of particular interest. Here we use picosecond transient absorption to measure the interface thermal conductance (G) of carbon nanotubes suspended in surfactant micelles in water. Classical molecular dynamics simulations of heat transfer from a carbon nanotube to a model hydrocarbon liquid are in agreement with experiment. Our findings indicate that heat transport in a nanotube composite material will be limited by the exceptionally small interface thermal conductance (G approximately 12 MW m(-2) K(-1)) and that the thermal conductivity of the composite will be much lower than the value estimated from the intrinsic thermal conductivity of the nanotubes and their volume fraction.

This article reports on the International Nanofluid Property Benchmark Exercise, or INPBE, in which the thermal conductivity of identical samples of colloidally stable dispersions of nanoparticles or "nanofluids," was measured by over 30 organizations worldwide, using a variety of experimental approaches, including the transient hot wire method, steady-state methods, and optical methods. The nanofluids tested in the exercise were comprised of aqueous and nonaqueous basefluids, metal and metal oxide particles, near-spherical and elongated particles, at low and high particle concentrations. The data analysis reveals that the data from most organizations lie within a relatively narrow band ͑Ϯ10% or less͒ about the sample average with only few outliers. The thermal conductivity of the nanofluids was found to increase with particle concentration and aspect ratio, as expected from classical theory. There are ͑small͒ systematic differences in the absolute values of the nanofluid thermal conductivity among the various experimental approaches; however, such differences tend to disappear when the data are normalized to the measured thermal conductivity of the basefluid. The effective medium theory developed for dispersed particles by Maxwell in 1881 and recently generalized by Nan et al. ͓J. Appl. Phys. 81, 6692 ͑1997͔͒, was found to be in good agreement with the experimental data, suggesting that no anomalous enhancement of thermal conductivity was achieved in the nanofluids tested in this exercise.

This paper summarises some of our recent work on the heat transfer of nanofluids (dilute liquid sus-pensions of nanoparticles). It covers heat conduction, convective heat transfer under both natural and forced flow conditions, and boiling heat transfer in the nucleate regime. The results show that, despite considerable data scattering, the presence of nanoparticles enhances thermal conduction under macroscopically static conditions mainly due to nanoparticle structuring / networking. The natural convective heat transfer coefficient is observed to decrease systematically with increasing nanoparticle concentration, and the deterioration is partially attributed to the high viscosity of nano-fluids. However, either enhancement or deterioration of convective heat transfer is observed under the forced flow conditions and particle migration is suggested to be an important mechanism. The results also show that the boiling heat transfer is enhanced in the nucleate regime for both alumina and titania nanofluids, and the enhancement is more sensitive to the concentration change for TiO2 nanofluids. It is concluded that there is still some way to go before we can tailor-make nanofluids for any targeted applications.