Molecular dynamics study of the thermal conductivity of nanoscale argon films

Abstract

Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were used to study the thermal conductivity of thin argon films. The MD simulations show that the argon film's thermal conductivity is affected by the thickness up to thickness of about 100 nm, which agrees with theoretical estimates. The results show that the MD method is very effective for modeling nanoscale thermal conduction. Besides pure argon films, the effect of vacancies on the argon film's thermal conductivity was also studied. The vacancies greatly reduce the thermal conductivity as a function of the vacancy concentration but not as a function of the vacancy distribution when the film's temperature is constant.