Thermal conduction and interface effects in nanoscale Fermi-Pasta-Ulam conductors

Interface phonon transport in nanomaterials: numerical methods and modulation strategies

The thermal properties of interfaces in nanomaterials are critical for various technological applications, including thermal management in electronic and photonic devices, thermoelectric conversion and thermal insulation. Recent advancements in numerical simulation tools (the non-equilibrium Green's approach, the Boltzmann transport equation and the Monte Carlo method, molecular dynamics simulations) have significantly enhanced our understanding of phonon transport and scattering processes in nanomaterials. These advances have led to the discovery of new thermal interfacial materials and enabled precise modulation of phonon thermal conductance to achieve desired thermal performance. This review summarizes recent research progress in interface thermal transport, focusing on intriguing heat phenomena such as finite size effect and phonon coherent property. Additionally, it discusses strategies for modulating thermal conductance through disorder and roughness. Finally, the review proposes the opportunities and challenges associated with modulating interface thermal transport.

Phonon mode at interface and its impact on interfacial thermal transport

Due to the minimization and integration of micro/nano-devices, the high density of interfaces becomes a significant challenge in various applications. Phonon modes at interface resulting from the mismatch between inhomogeneous functional counterparts are crucial for interfacial thermal transport and overall thermal management of micro/nano-devices, making it a topic of great research interest recently. Here, we comprehensively review the recent advances on the theoretical and experimental investigations of interfacial phonon mode and its impact on interfacial thermal transport. Firstly, we summarize the recent progresses of the theoretical and experimental characterization of interfacial phonon modes at various interfaces, along with the overview of the development of diverse methodologies. Then, the impact of interfacial phonon modes on interfacial thermal transport process are discussed from the normal modal decomposition and inelastic scattering mechanisms. Meanwhile, we examine various factors influencing the interfacial phonon modes and interfacial thermal transport, including temperature, interface roughness, interfacial mass gradient, interfacial disorder, and so on. Finally, an outlook is provided for future studies. This review provides a fundamental understanding of interfacial phonon modes and their impact on interfacial thermal transport, which would be beneficial for the exploration and optimization of thermal management in various micro/nano-devices with high density interfaces.

Species' functional traits and interactions drive nitrate-mediated sulfur-oxidizing community structure and functioning

IMPORTANCE

Understanding the processes and mechanisms governing microbial community assembly and their linkages to ecosystem functioning has long been a core issue in microbial ecology. An in-depth insight still requires combining with analyses of species' functional traits and microbial interactions. Our study showed how species' functional traits and interactions determined microbial community structure and functions by a well-controlled laboratory experiment with nitrate-mediated sulfur oxidation systems using high-throughput sequencing and culture-dependent technologies. The results provided solid evidences that species' functional traits and interactions were the intrinsic factors determining community structure and function. More importantly, our study established quantitative links between community structure and function based on species' functional traits and interactions, which would have important implications for the design and synthesis of microbiomes with expected functions.

Primers matter: Influence of the primer selection on human fungal detection using high throughput sequencing

Microbiota research has received an increasing attention for its role in disease development and fungi are considered as one of the key players in the microbial niche. Various sequencing approaches have been applied to uncover the role of fungal community in health and disease; however, little is known on the performance of various primers and comparability between the studies. Motivated by the recent publications, we performed a systematic comparison of the 18S and ITS regions to identify the impact of various primers on the sequencing results. Using four pairs of primers extensively used in literature, fungal community was retrieve from 25 fecal samples, and applying high throughput sequencing; and the results were compared in order to select the most suitable primers for fungal detection in human fecal samples. Considering the high variability between samples, primers described in the Earth microbiome project detected the broadest fungal spectrum suggesting its superior performance in mycobiome research.

Role of interfacial mode coupling of optical phonons on thermal boundary conductance

We investigate the influence of optical phonon coupling across interfaces comprised of different materials with varying crystallographic orientations on the overall thermal boundary conductance. We show that for interfaces formed between a fcc solid and a L10 solid (where L10 solids exhibit alternating atomic layers in certain orientations), coupling between acoustic phonons in the fcc crystal and optical phonons on the L10-side of the interface leads to a highly anisotropic thermal boundary conductance, where optical phonons can considerably enhance the conductance in a preferred crystallographic orientation of the layered solid. We attribute this in part to directionally dependent group velocities of optical phonons in the different crystallographic directions. For interfaces comprised of materials exhibiting diamond cubic crystal structures, higher conductances are observed for interfaces where there is a better overlap of acoustic phonons on either side of the interface, whereas, acoustic phonons directly coupling with high frequency optical phonons is shown to lower the overall conductance, especially at high temperatures where anharmonic interactions become important. Unique to the interfaces formed between the materials with diamond cubic crystal structures studied in this work, the presence of localized interfacial optical modes mediate thermal conductance across these interfaces.

Spectral Contributions to the Thermal Conductivity of C60 and the Fullerene Derivative PCBM

We investigate the heat transport mechanisms responsible in driving the characteristic temperature-dependent thermal conductivities of C₆₀ and PCBM crystals via molecular dynamics simulations. We find that the thermal conductivity of PCBM is "ultralow" across the temperature range studied in this work. In contrast, the temperature-dependent thermal conductivity of C₆₀ crystals exhibits two regimes: "crystal-like" behavior at low temperatures where thermal conductivity increases rapidly with decreasing temperature and temperature-independent thermal conductivities at higher temperatures. The spectral contributions to thermal conductivity for C₆₀ suggest that the majority of heat is carried by modes in the low-frequency regime (<2 THz), which is a consequence of intermolecular interactions. Unlike for C₆₀, these modes are not responsible for heat conduction in PCBM due to the mismatch in density of states introduced by the addition of low-frequency modes from the alkyl chains that are attached to the fullerene moieties.

Spectral mapping of heat transfer mechanisms at liquid-solid interfaces

Thermal transport through liquid-solid interfaces plays an important role in many chemical and biological processes, and better understanding of liquid-solid energy transfer is expected to enable improving the efficiency of thermally driven applications. We determine the spectral distribution of thermal current at liquid-solid interfaces from nonequilibrium molecular dynamics, delivering a detailed picture of the contributions of different vibrational modes to liquid-solid energy transfer. Our results show that surface modes located at the Brillouin zone edge and polarized along the liquid-solid surface normal play a crucial role in liquid-solid energy transfer. Strong liquid-solid adhesion allows also for the coupling of in-plane polarized modes in the solid with the liquid, enhancing the heat-transfer rate and enabling efficient energy transfer up to the cutoff frequency of the solid. Our results provide fundamental understanding of the energy-transfer mechanisms in liquid-solid systems and enable detailed investigations of energy transfer between, e.g., water and organic molecules.

Thermal balance and quantum heat transport in nanostructures thermalized by local Langevin heat baths

Modeling of thermal transport in practical nanostructures requires making tradeoffs between the size of the system and the completeness of the model. We study quantum heat transfer in a self-consistent thermal bath setup consisting of two lead regions connected by a center region. Atoms both in the leads and in the center region are coupled to quantum Langevin heat baths that mimic the damping and dephasing of phonon waves by anharmonic scattering. This approach treats the leads and the center region on the same footing and thereby allows for a simple and physically transparent thermalization of the system, enabling also perfect acoustic matching between the leads and the center region. Increasing the strength of the coupling reduces the mean-free path of phonons and gradually shifts phonon transport from ballistic regime to diffusive regime. In the center region, the bath temperatures are determined self-consistently from the requirement of zero net energy exchange between the local heat bath and each atom. By solving the stochastic equations of motion in frequency space and averaging over noise using the general fluctuation-dissipation relation derived by Dhar and Roy [J. Stat. Phys. 125, 801 (2006)], we derive the formula for thermal current, which contains the Caroli formula for phonon transmission function and reduces to the Landauer-Büttiker formula in the limit of vanishing coupling to local heat baths. We prove that the bath temperatures measure local kinetic energy and can, therefore, be interpreted as true atomic temperatures. In a setup where phonon reflections are eliminated, the Boltzmann transport equation under gray approximation with full phonon dispersion is shown to be equivalent to the self-consistent heat bath model. We also study thermal transport through two-dimensional constrictions in square lattice and graphene and discuss the differences between the exact solution and linear approximations.