Effect of Thin Film Confined Between Two Dissimilar Solids on Interfacial Thermal Resistance

Abstract

A non-equilibrium molecular dynamics model is developed to investigate how a thin film confined between two dissimilar solids affects the thermal transport across the material interface. For two highly dissimilar (phonon frequency mismatched) solids, it is found that the insertion of a thin film between them can greatly enhance thermal transport across the material interface by a factor of 2.3 if the thin film has one of the following characteristics: (1)a multi-atom-thick thin film of which the phonon density of states (DOS) bridges the two different phonon DOSs for the solid on each side of the thin film; (2)a single-atom-thick film which is weakly bonded to the solid on both sides of the thin film. The enhanced thermal transport in the single-atom-thick film case is found mainly due to the increased inelastic scattering of phonons by the atoms in the film. However, for solid-solid interfaces with a relatively small difference in the phonon DOS, it is found that the insertion of a thin film may decrease the thermal transport. © 2011 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Department(s)

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2011 Institute of Physics - IOP Publishing, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2011

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