Interfacial thermal conductance and thermal accommodation coefficient of evaporating thin liquid films: a molecular dynamics study

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were carried out in this study to investigate the effect of solid-gas binding strength and surface coverage on the interfacial thermal conductance and thermal accommodation coefficient of evaporating liquid films. Simple Lennard-Jones fluids were simulated in a cubic domain, which consisted of an upper platinum wall and a lower platinum wall, with argon fluid in between. Both the equilibrium molecular dynamics (EMD) and the non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) simulated the evaporation and condensation of the liquid films properly. In addition, the thermal conductance and accommodation coefficient increased with the increase in the binding strength. To further analyze the effects of inter-molecular forces and movements on heat transfer, the surface coverage and interaction time of the absorbed liquid atoms were measured with respect to various binding strengths. It is found that binding strength has an important role in forming the absorption layers that reduces the temperature jump and enhances the heat transfer performance. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.