MAE PhD student Mr. Yixin YU (supervised by Prof. Yanguang ZHOU) received the "HTD K-9 Session Presentation Award" for a research paper entitled: “Interfacial Thermal Conductance Spectrum in Nonequilibrium Molecular Dynamics Simulations Considering Anharmonicity, Asymmetry and Quantum Effects” at the ASME’s International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition 2023 (IMECE 2023), held in New Orleans, United States from October 29– November 02, 2023.

About the research: 

Interfacial thermal transport is critical for many thermal-related applications, such as heat dissipation in electronics. While the total interfacial thermal conductance (ITC) can be easily measured or calculated, the ITC spectral mapping has been investigated only recently and is not fully understood. The ITC spectrum has been widely investigated, mainly through empirical models and atomistic Green's function (AGF) method, and permutations thereof that only consider the elastic scatterings after Kapitza first defined the interfacial heat transfer between two different materials in 1941. Only recently, the anharmonic phonon scatterings were introduced into the analysis of the ITC spectrum. By combining nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations and atomistic Green's function method, we systematically investigate the ITC spectrum across an ideal interface, i.e., the argon/heavy argon interface. Here, we investigate the influence of anharmonicity, asymmetry, and quantum effects on the ITC spectrum at the planar interfaces of LJ solids, i.e., argon/heavy argon interfaces, using the spectral heat current method in the frame of nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations and atomistic Green's function.  Our results here provide a fundamental understanding of the ITC in molecular dynamics and suggest a strategy to calculate the interfacial thermal conductance in all temperature ranges using molecular dynamics.

About ASME IMECE: 

The International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) is ASME’s largest research and development (R&D) conference focused primarily on mechanical engineering while encompassing perspectives from many engineering disciplines. Each year, roughly 2,400 papers, presentations, and posters are presented at IMECE.