Thermal conduction at the nanoscale in some metals by MD

Abstract Miniaturization of electronic devices leads to nanoscale structures in the near future. As the system size decreases the heat dissipation density increases rapidly and the heat conduction becomes an important problem. Moreover, in very small systems the conduction is a size dependent phenomenon—conductivity decreases as the size decreases. We study the thermal conduction by phonons and its size dependency in seven metals, most of which are important in electronics. We use the molecular dynamic method with embedded atom potentials.