Fundamental issues in nanoscale heat transfer: From Coherenc to interfacial resistance in heat conduction

Abstract

Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.

When system sizes shrink to nanoscales as in the case of electronic and optical devices, heat transfer laws are altered due to the modification of the basic physical mechanisms at play, especially in the fields of conduction. We expose recent advances in the understanding of heat conduction in semi-conductor superlattices. The effect of (i) coherence and (ii) interfaces becoming predominant, we use a direct simulation technique -i.e. Molecular Dynamics- to estimate the thermal resistance generated by those effects.