Continuous water film formed on a hydrophilic or superhydrophilic surface can delay the formation of a vapor film in boiling and thus improve critical heat flux (CHF), therefore, the fabrication of hydrophilic or superhydrophilic surface is an efficient approach to enhance boiling heat transfer. In the present work, superhydrophilic TiO 2 nanotube arrays (TiNAs) interfaces are fabricated by anodization in fluoride contained electrolyte, and the fluorine is found out to be the key factor affecting the wettability of TiNAs interfaces. After anodization, a stable oxy-fluoride layer was formed at the interface as form of -O-Ti-F, the fluorine atoms are linked to the interface as terminal groups. Due to the strong polarity of titanium oxy-fluorides, superhrophilic TiO 2 nanotube arrays interface is obtained. Furthermore, we characterize the stability of titanium oxy-fluorides by storing. After store for 2 months, the inner titanium fluorides (TiF 4 ) are lost due to its strong volatility. Fortunately, the content of titanium oxy-fluorides remains the same, and retain its remarkable superhydrophilic properties. It is potential to design energy-efficient devices ranging from boiling heat transfer to self-cleaning.

A number of studies have reported enhancing the thermal conductivity of semi-crystalline polymers through mechanical stretching, but practical application of this process has proven difficult. Here we demonstrate the application of enhanced thermal conductivity in a purely amorphous polymer for a thermal interface material (TIM) without conductive fillers. Many polymer-based TIMs contain carbon fillers to enhance the thermal conductivity, however the TIMs reported herein are comprised solely of polymer nanotubes. The conjugated polymer polythiophene (Pth) is electropolymerized in nanotemplates to produce arrays of vertically aligned nanotubes, which adhere well to opposing substrates through van der Waals forces. We find that the total thermal resistances of the Pth-TIMs are a strong function of height with some dependence on bonding pressure, yet independent of applied pressure after bonding. Photoacoustic measurements show that the total thermal resistance of the TIMs ranges from 9.8 ± 3.8 to 155 ± 32 mm 2 -K/W depending on the array height and bonding pressure. Estimates of the component resistances indicate that the majority of the resistance is in the contact between the nanotube free tips and the opposing quartz substrate. These Pth-TIMs demonstrate that enhanced thermal conductivity polymers can be suitable for heat transfer materials without thermally conductive fillers.

The heat transfer during spray cooling was studied experimentally using deionized water to investigate the spray characteristics and the differences between spray cooling on a smooth silicon surface and nano- and hybrid micro/nano-structured surfaces. The spray cooling experiments show that the heat transfer rates were best for the nano-structured surface, followed by the smooth surface coated with the SiO 2 film and the pure silicon surface since the contact angle was smallest on the nano-structured surface and increased on the other two surfaces. The Critical Heat Flux (CHF) was largest for the 25G×25S surface coated with four Carbon Nano Tube (CNT) films with a 75.3% increase over the smooth surface.

Vapor condensation on silicon nanotubes has been simulated by classical molecular dynamics to understand how the nucleation and condensation process for pores is affected. Two different nanotube aspect ratios were examined to see if there are growth rate changes. The rate for the two different types of nanotubes did not show significant variation meaning that the aspect ratio is an insignificant factor to enhance condensation. This result is consistent with previous nanorod studies. The supersaturated vapor gathered both inside and outside of the tube. Unlike the growth rate, however, the occurrence of homogeneous nucleation was hindered contrary to other basic geometries in previous studies.

This paper reports an experimental study of thermal conductivity of room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) based magnetic nanofluids. Various magnetic nanoparticles of metal oxides with high thermal conductivity, such as CuO, Al 2 O 3 , Fe 3 O 4 and Carbon Nano Tubes (CNTs), were used to prepare magnetic nanofluids, while RTIL, trihexyl (tetradecyl) posphonium dicyanamide was used as the base fluid. Two major parameters that affect to the thermal conductivity enhancement of fluids were investigated. The effect of particle concentration and external magnetic fields were tested. It was observed that the magnetic nanofluids thermal conductivities increase with increment of particle concentration and external magnetic field parallel to the temperature gradient. Besides, it was observed that under higher magnetic fields, thermal conductivity enhancement tends to approach a saturation state. Surfactant was used to disperse magnetic nanoparticles within the RTILs. The transient hot wire method was used for this investigation.

In the present work, the effective thermal conductivity of single walled carbon nanotube dispersions in water was investigated experimentally. Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) were synthesized using the alcohol catalytic chemical vapour deposition method. The diameter distribution of the SWNTs was determined using resonance Raman spectroscopy. Sodium deoxycholate (SDC) was used as the surfactant to prepare the nanofluid dispersions. Photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy (PLE) reveals that majority of the nanotubes were highly individualized when SDC was employed as the surfactant. The nanofluid dispersions were further characterized using transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and optical absorption spectroscopy (OAS). Thermal conductivity measurements were carried out using a transient hot wire technique. Nanotube loading of up to 0.3 vol% was used. Thermal conductivity enhancement was found to be dependent on nanotube volume fraction and temperature. At room temperature the thermal conductivity enhancement was found to be non-linear and a maximum enhancement of 13.8% was measured at 0.3 vol% loading. Effective thermal conductivity was increased to 51% at 333 K when the nanotube loading is 0.3 vol%. Classical macroscopic models fail to predict the measured thermal conductivity enhancement precisely. The possible mechanism for the enhancement observed is attributed to the percolation of nanotubes to form a three-dimensional structure. Indirect effects of Brownian motion may assist the formation of percolating networks at higher temperature thereby leading to further enhancements at higher temperature.

It has been shown that nanotubes and nanocones are most effective to make indents with large aspect ratios. Detailed studies in the heat transfer processes under the nano-scale indentation, and the accompanying stress distributions are required much attention. In this study, the copper substrate was indented with a nanotube or nano-cone. It is found that nano-cones may make indents with larger aspect ratios than the nanotubes due to the local shell buckling. Time-domain heat transfer and stress analysis was carried out by using a control-volume technique with an atomic spatial resolution, except near the boundaries. The effect of temperatures and stresses on the changes of the microstructures of the substrate will be discussed.

Vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes (VA-SWNTs) is expected to be an extra-ordinal material for various optical, electrical, energy, and thermal devices. The recent progress in growth control and characterization techniques will be discussed. The CVD growth mechanism of VA-SWNTs is discussed based on the in-situ growth monitoring by laser absorption during CVD. The growth curves are characterized by an exponential decay of the growth rate from the initial rate determined by ethanol pressure. The initial growth rate and decay of it are discussed with carbon over-coat on metal catalysts and gas phase thermal decomposition of precursor ethanol. For the precisely patterned growth of SWNTs, we recently propose a surface-energy-difference driven selective deposition of catalyst for localized growth of SWNTs. For a self assembled monolayer (SAM) patterned Si surface, catalyst particles deposit and SWNTs grow only on the hydrophilic regions. The proposed all-liquid-based approach possesses significant advantages in scalability and resolution over state-to-the-art techniques, which we believe can greatly advance the fabrication of nano-devices using high-quality as-grown SWNTs. The optical characterization of the VA-SWNT film using polarized absorption, polarized Raman, and photoluminescence spectroscopy will be discussed. Laser-excitation of a vertically aligned film from top means that each nanotube is excited perpendicular to its axis. Because of this predominant perpendicular excitation, interesting cross-polarized absorption and confusing and practically important Raman features are observed. The extremely high and peculiar thermal conductivity of single-walled carbon nanotubes has been explored by non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulation approaches. The thermal properties of the vertically aligned film and composite materials are studied by several experimental techniques and Monte Carlo simulations based on molecular dynamics inputs of thermal conductivity and thermal boundary resistance. Current understanding of thermal properties of the film is discussed.

In this paper, we study the thermal conductivities of sing-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and CNTs-based nanocomposites using molecular dynamics simulations. Length dependence of the thermal conductivity of (5, 5) carbon nanotube at 300 K and 1000 K is simulated. At room temperature the thermal conductivity shows linear length dependence with the tube length less than 40 nm, which indicates the completely ballistic transport. The thermal conductivity increases with the increase of the nanotube length, but the increase rate decreases as the length increases. It shows that the phonon transport transits from ballistic to diffusive. In the simulations, the power exponent of the thermal conductivity of carbon nanotube to the tube length decreases by decaying exponential function as the tube length increases. We also observe a decrease of the low-dimensional effects by the surrounding matters. A carbon-nanotube-atom-fixed and -activated scheme of non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations is put forward to extract the thermal conductivity of carbon nanotubes embedded in solid argon. Though a 6.5% volume fraction of CNTs increases the composite thermal conductivity by about twice larger than that of the pure basal material, the thermal conductivity of CNTs embedded in solids is found to be decreased by 1/8–1/5 with reference to that of pure ones. The decrease of the intrinsic thermal conductivity of the solid-embedded CNTs and the thermal interface resistance are demonstrated to be responsible for the results.

Design and construction of nanomotors are one of the most attractive fields in nanotechnology. Following the introduction of a novel concept of the thermomass, the relative mass of a phonon gas based on the Einstein’s energy-mass relation, the continuum and momentum conservation equations for the phonon gas are established to characterize the hydrodynamics of the phonon current in a solid. Like the gas flows in the porous mediums, the phonon current in a dielectric solid imposes a driving force on the solid framework atoms, which can be calculated quantitatively and can be applied to actuate nanomotors. We also predict the dynamic behavior of a nanomotor made up of multi-walled carbon nanotubes in terms of molecular dynamics simulations. A shorter single-walled carbon nanotube with a larger diameter, as a mobile part, surrounds a longer single-walled carbon nanotube with a smaller diameter working as a shaft. When a phonon current passes through the inner shaft, the outer nanotube will translate along and/or rotate around the shaft depending on the chiralities of the carbon nanotubes. The motion traces are found to depend on the chirality pair regularly. This type of nanomotor may be promising because they are directly driven by thermal energy transport.

In this paper, we report the recent developments in the study of heat transport in nano materials. First of all, we show that phonon transports in nanotube super-diffusively which leads to a length dependence thermal conductivity, thus breaks down the Fourier law. Then we discuss how the introduction of isotope doping can reduce the thermal conductivity efficiently. The theoretical results are in good agreement with experimental ones. Finally, we will demonstrate that nanoscale structures are promising candidates for heat rectification.

Dynamical behavior of water confined inside a capped single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) is investigated at different temperatures via the Molecular Dynamics (MD) Simulation method. Water in a SWCNT behaves in the fashion of random walk and increases amplitudes with temperature. Moreover, the SWCNT’s tip vibrates more significantly as temperature increases. The water molecules embedded nanotubes exhibit less thermal noise amplitude, indicating increases in effective stiffness in the water-nanotube composite. Further, the vibrational amplitude of a water-embedded SWCNT’s tip is more noticeable during the initial transient state at the beginning of our MD simulations, and gradually decays, and reaches a steady state, as MD simulation time increases. The variation of vibrating amplitude of the SWCNT’s tip increases linearly as temperature increases when no water is present inside. The tip vibration exhibits the largest amplitude when temperature is at the boiling point of water. Moreover, the tip vibration increases monotonically as temperature increases, providing information to estimate the effective Young’s modulus of the water-nanotube composite. The diffusion pathways of water inside a SWCNT are also studied in terms of temperature changes.

Modeling of heat transfer in nanoscale multilayer solid-state structures is presented in this article to seek a potential design of thermoelectric materials. The phonon radiative heat conduction equation is used to describe the heat transport behavior in nanoscale multilayer solid-state structures and the diffuse mismatch model is utilized to simulate the interface condition between two dissimilar materials. In this paper, the thermal conductivity of thin film superlattices, nano wire superlattices and nano tube superlattices were calculated. Then, size effects on the performance of thermoelectric micro coolers were examined in detail. The results show that the effective thermal conductivity of thermoelectric materials in superlattice structures decreases as the layer thickness decreases. In addition, the thermal conductivities of nano wire and nano tube superlattices are less than that of thin film superlattices when they have the same layer thickness. It is noted that the restriction on the radial direction not only decreases the thermal conductivity in radial direction but also in axial direction. Thus, nano wire and nano tube superlattices are potential materials for high performance thermoelectric devices.

Temperature plays a significant role in determining the dynamics of flow on the nanoscale. This is particularly important with carbon nanotubes, which are likely to form an integral part of future nanofluidic and biological devices. We demonstrate through first-principles density-functional theory (DFT) that the orientation of the individual water molecules plays a significant role in determining the temperatures and energies at which water is able to enter the nanotube. This has a number of implications for the flow of water through the nanotube at different temperatures and densities, particularly when considering low-density water vapour.