Hydrodynamic Modeling of Heat Conduction in Nanoscale Systems

J Nanosci Nanotechnol. 2015 Apr;15(4):3229-33. doi: 10.1166/jnn.2015.9688.

Abstract

Heat conduction in nanoscale systems has different behavior from bulk materials, which is applied to develop high performance thermoelectric material. The non-trivial behavior is caused by the ballistic-diffusive transport of heat carriers such as phonons. In this paper, we use the thermomass theory and phonon hydrodynamics model to establish a hydrodynamic model for phonon transport. In nanoscale systems, a Poiseuille flow of phonon gas is formed due to the boundary scattering. The thickness of boundary layer is proportional to the mean free paths of phonon. When the boundary layer thickness is comparable with the whole flow region, strong decrease of effective thermal conductivity happens. This method can serve as a fast evaluation method for nanoscale heat conduction.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't