Atomistic simulation of temperature dependent thermal transport across nanoconfined liquid

Abstract: Non-equilibrium classical molecular dynamics simulation was carried out to study the temperature dependence of thermal transport across nanogap confined liquid. The research was focused on the temperature response behavior of nanoconfined liquid subjected to different temperature environment. The simulation was carried out with simplified molecular model. It was found that the molecular mobility and thermal conductance of liquid reduces significantly due to the confinement in a nanometer scale cavity. The simulation also reveals that thermal resistance responses oppositely to the change in temperature for the nanoconfined liquid compared to the bulk liquid; thermal resistance of the nanoconfined liquid was observed to decrease with the increase of temperature following a power law relation (R t/R t_inital∼0.9837(T/T initial)−0.617) whereas it increases for the bulk liquid. Thermal resistance of the confined liquid and its dependence on temperature was also observed to strongly depend on the gap thickness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]