Abstract:
The effects of the graphene orientation on interfacial thermal conductivity of graphene/nitrate compo-sites with binary nitrate Solar salt(NaNO
3/KNO
3 mass ratio of 6∶4) as substrate and graphene as filler was investi-gated by non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) method. It is shown that the interfacial thermal conductance can be considerably enhanced from 46.36 MW·m
−2·K
−1 to 80.03 MW·m
−2·K
−1 as the angle
θ between the graphene surface and the heat flux direction (i.e.,
z direction) decreases from 90° to 0°. As the angle
θ decreases, the effective projection of the graphene plane in the direction of heat flow is enhanced, and more heat will be transported along the graphene plane. The results of the vibrational density of state (DOS) clearly signify that heat flow at the interface changes from transport across the graphene plane to efficient transport along the graphene plane with the decrease of angle between graphene and heat flow. Moreover, the nitrates form a similar dense layer around the graphene for all different orientation angles, which would also promote the enhancement of the thermal conductance. Finally, the thermal conductivity of the graphene/nitrates composites with different orientations at the microscale is predicted by the effective medium theory. It is found that the thermal conductivity of the composite decreases with the orientation angle, but increases with the volume fraction and the length of the graphene.