Phonon heat transfer across a nanogap under an external electric field

Abstract

Thermal energy transport across a nanogap can be influenced by an electric field along the heat flow direction. However, the role of electric field orientation in heat transfer across a nanogap is not fully understood. To address this, we performed the nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations to investigate how a transverse electric field affects phonon heat transfer across an SiC–SiC nanogap. In a stable nonequilibrium state, the temperature of heating and cooling SiC walls were maintained at 320 K and 280 K, respectively. The electric field strengths were set to 0.4, 0.8, and 1.2 V/Å. The results indicate that the transverse electric field has insignificant impact on thermal gap conductance in the cases of nonidentical atomic surface terminations. Conversely, the thermal gap conductance decreases under the transverse electric field in the cases of identical atomic surface terminations.

Wentao Chen

Associate Professor

My research interests include extreme near-field heat transfer, thermal transport at the solid-solid and solid-liquid interface, and molecular dynamics simulation.