Introduction: Interior heat flow provides essential constraints on the thermal and chemical evolution of planetary bodies. On the moon, heat flow instrument designs typically have to reach depths below the annual solar thermal wave for the Moon (2-3 m), or alternatively methods must be applied to be able to decouple the influence of the relatively large temperature gradients associated with the...

This paper reports on the influence of laser irradiation onto the electrical conductance of gold nanocontacts established with the mechanically controllable breakjunction technique. We concentrate here on the study of reversible conductance changes which can be as high as 200%. We investigate the dependence on the initial conductance of the contacts, the wavelength, the intensity and position o...

A method is developed for placing bounds on the electrical contact conductance between contacting elastic bodies with rough surfaces. An analogy is ­ rst established between contact conductance and the incremental sti¬ness in the mechanical contact problem. Results from contact mechanics and the reciprocal theorem are then used to bracket the mechanical load{displacement curve between those for...

We use an electron thermometer to measure the temperature rise of approximately 2 x 10(5) electrons in a two-dimensional box, due to heat flow into the box through a ballistic one-dimensional (1D) constriction. Using a simple model we deduce the thermal conductance kappa(Vg) of the 1D constriction, which we compare to its electrical conductance characteristics; for the first four 1D subbands th...

We study the effect of confinement on the phonon properties of ultra-narrow silicon nanowires of side sizes of 1 nm to 10 nm. We use the modified valence force field (MVFF) method to compute the phononic dispersion and extract the density of states, the transmission function, the sound velocity, the ballistic thermal conductance, and boundary-scattering-limited diffusive thermal conductivity. W...

Thermal boundary conductance is becoming increasingly important in microelectronic device design and thermal management. Although there has been much success in predicting and modeling thermal boundary conductance at low temperatures, the current models applied at temperatures more common in device operation are not adequate due to our current limited understanding of phonon transport channels....

Thermal transport across interfaces is becoming increasingly important with the advent of nanostructures and nanocomposite materials. A nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) approach is developed to investigate thermal transport across solid–solid interfaces. Thermal boundary conductance is calculated for a range of mismatched interfaces and compared to the diffuse mismatch model (DMM). The ...