International audienceHeat can be exchanged between two surfaces through emission and absorption of thermal radiation. It has been predicted theoretically that for distances smaller than the peak wavelength of the blackbody spectrum, radiative heat transfer can be increased by the contribution of evanescent waves(1-8). This contribution can be viewed as energy tunnelling through the gap between the surfaces. Although these effects have already been observed(9-14), a detailed quantitative comparison between theory and experiments in the nanometre regime is still lacking. Here, we report an experimental setup that allows measurement of conductance for gaps varying between 30 nm and 2.5 mu m. Our measurements pave the way for the design of submicrometre nanoscale heaters that could be used for heat-assisted magnetic recording or heat-assisted lithography

We investigate the thermal conductivity of silicon nanowires based on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The simulated thermal conductivities of nanowires with square cross sections are found to be about two orders of magnitude smaller than those of bulk Si crystals in a wide range of temperatures (200–500 K) for both rigid and free boundary conditions. A solution of the Boltzmann transport equation is used to explore the possibility of explaining the MD results based on boundary scattering.

Thermal conductivity (kappa) of isolated carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is higher than the kappa of diamond; however, in this Letter we show that the kappa of a packed bed of three-dimensional random networks of single and multiwall CNTs is smaller than that of thermally insulating amorphous polymers. The thermoelectric power (Sigma) of the random network of CNTs was also measured. The Sigma of a single wall nanotube network is very similar to that of isolated nanotubes and, in contrast with kappa, Sigma shows a strong dependence on the tube diameter.

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A detailed understanding of the vibrational heat transfer mechanisms between solids is essential for the efficient thermal engineering and control of nanomaterials. We investigate the frequency dependence of anharmonic scattering and interfacial thermal conduction between two acoustically mismatched solids in planar contact by calculating the spectral decomposition of the heat current flowing through an interface between two materials. The calculations are based on analyzing the correlations of atomic vibrations using the data extracted from nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. Inelastic effects arising from anharmonic interactions are shown to significantly facilitate heat transfer between two mass-mismatched face-centered-cubic lattices even at frequencies exceeding the cutoff frequency of the heavier material due to (i) enhanced dissipation of evanescent vibrational modes and (ii) frequency-doubling and frequency-halving three-phonon energy transfer processes at the interface. The results provide substantial insight into interfacial energy transfer mechanisms, especially at high temperatures, where inelastic effects become important and other computational methods are ineffective.