Thermal conductivity of nanoscale thin nickel films

Abstract

Abstract The inhmogenmus non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) scheme is applied to model phonon heat conduction in thin nickel films. The electronic contribution to the thermal conductivity of the film is deduced from the electrical conductivity through the use of the Wiedemann-Fmnz law. At the average temperature of T= 300 K, which is lower than the Debye temperature ΘD= 450 K, the results show that in a film thickness range of about 1-11nm, the calculated cross-plane thermal conductivity decreases almost linearly with the decreasing film thickness, exhibiting a remarkable reduction compared with the bulk value. The electrical and thermal conductivities are anisotropic in thin nickel films for the thickness under about 10 nm. The phonon mean free path is estimated and the size effect on the thermal conductivity is attributed to the reduction of the phonon mean free path according to the kinetic theory.