Research on characteristics of interfacial heat transport between two kinds of materials using a mixed MD–FE model

The aim of this article is to provide a systematic method to investigate characteristics of interfacial heat transport in electronic packaging. A multi-scale model is proposed for the interfacial thermal conductance. The approach is a mixed modeling method using molecular dynamics simulation and a finite-element method. The molecular dynamics simulation is the means for describing the critical regions within the system and the finite-element method is the means for a continuum description of the remainder of the system. Applying various boundary conditions to the atomic model is rather cumbersome. In this mixed model, the continuum subdomain serves primarily as a boundary model that provides the low-frequency impedance and a sink for the energy associated with outgoing waves of the molecular dynamics model. Then, boundary conditions can be applied to the finite-element model more easily. Some simulation results can be obtained for investigation of characteristics of interfacial heat transport between dissimilar materials in electronic packaging. The research establishes a new theoretical basis for engineering design and future work.