Thermal Interface Conductance Between Aluminum and Silicon by Molecular Dynamics Simulations

The thermal interface conductance between Al and Si was simulated by a non-equilibrium molecular dynamics method. In the simulations, the coupling between electrons and phonons in Al are considered by using a stochastic force. The results show the size dependence of the interface thermal conductance...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yang, Nuo, Luo, Tengfei, Esfarjani, Keivan, Henry, Asegun, Tian, Zhiting, Shiomi, Junichiro, Chalopin, Yann, Li, Baowen, Chen, Gang
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Scientific Publishers 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97396
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3968-8530
Description
Summary:The thermal interface conductance between Al and Si was simulated by a non-equilibrium molecular dynamics method. In the simulations, the coupling between electrons and phonons in Al are considered by using a stochastic force. The results show the size dependence of the interface thermal conductance and the effect of electron–phonon coupling on the interface thermal conductance. To understand the mechanism of interface resistance, the vibration power spectra are calculated. We find that the atomic level disorder near the interface is an important aspect of interfacial phonon transport, which leads to a modification of the phonon states near the interface. There, the vibrational spectrum near the interface greatly differs from the bulk. This change in the vibrational spectrum affects the results predicted by AMM and DMM theories and indicates new physics is involved with phonon transport across interfaces.