Nanoscale Thermal Conductivity: Size Dependence by Molecular Dynamics

Abstract

Miniaturization of electronic devices will lead to nanoscale structures in the near future. As the system size decreases the heat dissipation density increases rapidly and the heat conduction becomes an important problem. Moreover, in very small systems the conduction is a size dependent phenomenon–conductivity decreases as the size decreases. We study the thermal conduction by phonons and its size dependence in eight different materials. We use the molecular dynamics method with embedded atom potentials.