Non-monotonic heat dissipation phenomenon in close-packed quasi-2D and 3D hotspot system

Abstract

Transient heat dissipation in close-packed quasi-2D nanoline and 3D nanocuboid hotspot systems is studied based on phonon Boltzmann transport equation. It is found that, counter-intuitively, the heat dissipation efficiency is not a monotonic function of the distance between adjacent nanoscale heat sources: the heat dissipation efficiency reaches the highest value when this distance is comparable to the phonon mean free path. This is due to the competition of two thermal transport processes: quasiballistic transport when phonons escape from the nanoscale heat source and the scattering among phonons originating from adjacent nanoscale heat source.