Thermal interface tailoring in composite materials

The thermal transport in heterogeneous materials systems, such as in composites, is essentially controlled by the phonon scattering phenomena at the materials interface due to the interface materials property mismatch. Such phenomena are also prevalent in joints or component interfaces. The thermal property mismatch at the materials interface, in the molecular scale, is primarily dictated by the phonon density of state across the interface. In this paper, the interface materials configuration for tailoring the thermal properties of composite materials with nano constituents is presented. The materials modeling using both the finite element analysis (FEM) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations is performed to identify the effect of materials constituent scale as well as the nano constituent surface functionalization on the interface thermal transport phenomena. It is observed that the effect of surface functionalization towards establishing covalent bonding between the nano constituent surface the matrix (such as polymers) is extremely important in enhancing the interface thermal conductance.