Argon Interaction with Gold Surfaces: Ab Initio-Assisted Determination of Pair Ar–Au Potentials for Molecular Dynamics Simulations

The Influence of Gas-Wall and Gas-Gas Interactions on the Accommodation Coefficients for Rarefied Gases: A Molecular Dynamics Study

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are conducted to determine energy and momentum accommodation coefficients at the interface between rarefied gas and solid walls. The MD simulation setup consists of two parallel walls, and of inert gas confined between them. Different mixing rules, as well as existing ab-initio computations combined with interatomic Lennard-Jones potentials were employed in MD simulations to investigate the corresponding effects of gas-surface interaction strength on accommodation coefficients for Argon and Helium gases on a gold surface. Comparing the obtained MD results for accommodation coefficients with empirical and numerical values in the literature revealed that the interaction potential based on ab-initio calculations is the most reliable one for computing accommodation coefficients. Finally, it is shown that gas–gas interactions in the two parallel walls approach led to an enhancement in computed accommodation coefficients compared to the molecular beam approach. The values for the two parallel walls approach are also closer to the experimental values.

Performance of van der Waals DFT approaches for helium diffraction on metal surfaces

The ability of the different approaches proposed to date to include the effects of van der Waals (vdW) dispersion forces in density functional theory (DFT) is currently under debate. Here, we used the diffraction of He on a Ru(0 0 0 1) surface as a challenging benchmark system to analyze the suitability of several representative approaches, from the ones correcting the exchange-correlation generalized gradient approximation (GGA) functional, to the ones correcting the DFT energies through pairwise-based methods. To perform our analysis, we have built seven continuous potential energy surfaces (PESs) and carried out quantum dynamics simulations using a multi-configuration time-dependent Hartree method. Our analysis reveals that standard DFT within the PBE-GGA framework, although it overestimates diffraction probabilities, yields the best results in comparison with available experimental measurements. On the other hand, although several of the existing vdW DFT approaches yield physisorption wells in very good agreement with experiment, they all seem to overestimate the long-distance corrugation of the PES, the region probed by He scattering, resulting in a large overestimation of diffraction probabilities.

Molecular dynamics investigation of surface roughness scale effect on interfacial thermal conductance at solid-liquid interfaces

Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations were conducted for solid-liquid-solid systems with nanometer scale grooved surfaces and an induced heat flux for a wide range of topology and solid-liquid interaction conditions to investigate the mechanism of solid-liquid heat transfer, which is the first work of such extensive detail done about the nanoscale roughness effect on heat transfer properties. Single-atom molecules were used for liquid, and the solid-liquid interaction was varied from superhydrophobic to superhydrophilic, while the groove scale was varied from single atom to several nanometers, while keeping the surface area twice that of a flat surface. Both Wenzel and Cassie wetting regimes with a clear transition point were observed due to the capillary effect inside larger grooves that were more than 5 liquid molecule diameters, while such transition was not observed at smaller scales. At the hydrophobic state, large scale grooves had lower interfacial thermal conductance (ITC) due to the Cassie regime, i.e., having unfilled grooves, while at the hydrophilic state, grooved surfaces had ITC about twice that of a flat surface, indicating an extended heat transfer surface effect regardless of the groove scale. At the superhydrophilic state, crystallization of liquid at the surface occurred, and the packing of liquid molecules had a substantial effect on ITC regardless of the groove scale. Finally, both potential energy of solid-liquid interaction and work of solid-liquid adhesion were calculated and were shown to be in similar relations to ITC for all groove scales, except for the smallest single-atom scale grooves, due to a different heat transfer mechanism.