How Liquid Ordering Within the Contact Layer Influences Thermal Boundary Conductance at Liquid/Solid Interfaces

Efforts to further miniaturize 3D integrated chips are being stymied by the difficulty in extracting excessive waste heat, which among other deleterious effects, causes thermal runaway and chip failure. Solutions have focused on embedding on chip platforms series of microfluidic channels to convect excess heat away from hot spots. However even in the absence of liquid flow, the fundamental mechanisms which control the thermal flux across a liquid/solid (L/S) interface are not well understood. Fortunately, non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations (NEMD) offer the ideal probative tool to help investigate and solve this problem. In this talk, we focus on NEMD studies in planar L/S systems at steady state subject to a fixed temperature difference. We shall discuss numerous correlations between thermal boundary resistance and structural and dynamic properties of the contact liquid layer. The results of this fundamental study may help facilitate improved design of the interfacial layer so as to maximize heat transfer across L/S interfaces.