A New Facility for the Experimental Investigation on Nano Heat Transfer between Gas Molecules and Ceramic Surfaces

Since the last decade, the interest has risen in nanoscaled technological products, which have advantages through their size effect. The size effect also plays a significant role in the area of micro- and nanoscale heat transfers. Many applications were developed using this effect, such as nanostructured porous media, e.g. Aerogels or ceramics. This experimental work is focused on the determination of thermal accommodation coefficients (TAC) on ceramic surfaces considering several influencing factors. TAC is influenced by temperature, kind of gas, kind of wall material, roughness, and contamination with adsorbed gas layers. To determine TAC, a parallel plate apparatus is used, although most of the measurements in the past have been arranged with the hot wire method. Using the parallel plates apparatus is advantageous due to its simpler machining of specimens and to analyze the effect of roughness. The apparatus is build similar to the well-known guarded hot-plate method using an unidirectional heat flux through the gas layer due to a small temperature gradient, which is provided by two different heat foils. The measurements take place between 30 and 100°C, 10−4, and 1 mbar.