title: Enhanced energy transport owing to nonlinear interface interaction.
abstract: It is generally expected that the interface coupling leads to the suppression of thermal transport through coupled nanostructures due to the additional interface phonon-phonon scattering. However, recent experiments demonstrated that the interface van der Waals interactions can significantly enhance the thermal transfer of bonding boron nanoribbons compared to a single freestanding nanoribbon. To obtain a more in-depth understanding on the important role of the nonlinear interface coupling in the heat transports, in the present paper, we explore the effect of nonlinearity in the interface interaction on the phonon transport by studying the coupled one-dimensional (1D) Frenkel-Kontorova lattices. It is found that the thermal conductivity increases with increasing interface nonlinear intensity for weak inter-chain nonlinearity. By developing the effective phonon theory of coupled systems, we calculate the dependence of heat conductivity on interfacial nonlinearity in weak inter-chain couplings regime which is qualitatively in good agreement with the result obtained from molecular dynamics simulations. Moreover, we demonstrate that, with increasing interface nonlinear intensity, the system dimensionless nonlinearity strength is reduced, which in turn gives rise to the enhancement of thermal conductivity. Our results pave the way for manipulating the energy transport through coupled nanostructures for future emerging applications.
authors.affiliation: College of Information Science and Engineering, Huaqiao University, Xiamen 361021, China.|Department of Physics and the Beijing-Hong Kong-Singapore Joint Centre for Nonlinear and Complex Systems (Beijing), Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Ruixia
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Science and Technology on Plasma Physics Laboratory, Research Center of Laser Fusion, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang 621900, China.
authors.forename: Zongqiang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Enhanced Heat Transfer and Energy Conservation, Ministry of Education, College of Environmental and Energy Engineering, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: College of Information Science and Engineering, Huaqiao University, Xiamen 361021, China.|Department of Physics and the Beijing-Hong Kong-Singapore Joint Centre for Nonlinear and Complex Systems (Beijing), Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Zhigang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zheng