Investigation of Interfacial Thermal Resistance on Nano-Structures Using Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Due to their very high thermal conductivity carbon nanotubes have been found to be an excellent material for thermal management. Experiments have shown that the heaters coated with carbon nanotubes increase the heat transfer by as much as 60%. Also when nanotubes are used as filler materials in composites, they tend to increase the thermal conductivity of the composites. But the increase in the heat transfer and the thermal conductivity has been found to be much less than the calculated values. This decrease has been attributed to the interfacial thermal resistance between the carbon nanotubes and the surrounding material. MD simulations were performed to study the interfacial thermal resistance between the carbon nanotubes and the liquid molecules. In the simulations, the nanotube is placed at the center of the simulation box and a temperature of 300K is imposed on the system. Then the temperature of the nanotube is raised instantaneously and the system is allowed to relax. From the temperature decay, the interfacial thermal resistance between the carbon nanotube and the liquid molecules is calculated. In this study the liquid molecules under investigation are n-heptane, n-tridecane and n-nonadecane.