On the Convection Heat Transfer Coefficient in Nanochannels: A Molecular Dynamics Study

The forced-convection heat transfer of liquid argon in a copper nanochannel is studied by means of molecular dynamics simulations. It is shown that the phenomenon of thermal slip, described using the Kapitza length, affects the calculation of the convection heat transfer coefficient, hence the estimation of the Nusselt number. The interest in forced convection of low-temperature liquids in nanochannels is driven by the thermal management requirements of next-generation microelectronic systems and components, with applications such as high-throughput data communication and quantum computing. The simulation of the fluid system utilized a Lennard-Jones potential, with interactions involving the solid walls adjusted via the Lorentz-Berthelot mixing rule, while the flow was induced by applying a driving force to argon atoms before the channel inlet. The system was allowed to relax isothermally in order to obtain a steady-state flow, and subsequently, a heaviside temperature step was applied to the wall to initiate heat transfer.