Molecular Dynamics Study of the Interfacial Thermal Conductance at the Graphene/Paraffin Interface in Solid and Liquid Phases

By utilizing molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, we study the interfacial thermal conductance at the interface of graphene and paraffin. In doing so, we conduct non-equilibrium heat source and sink simulations on systems of parallel and perpendicular configurations in which the heat flow is parallel and perpendicular to the surface of graphene, respectively. For the perpendicular configuration, graphene with different number of layers are considered. The results show that the interfacial thermal conductance decreases with the number of layers and converges to a value which is equal to the obtained conductance by using the parallel configuration. We also study the conductance for the solid phase paraffin. The results indicate that solid paraffin-graphene interfaces have higher conductance values with respect to the corresponding liquid phase systems.