Thermal conductivity of liquid argon in nanochannels from molecular dynamics simulations

The thermal conductivity of liquid argon in nanochannels has been calculated over a wide range of densities using two independent methods-the Green-Kubo approach in equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations and the Müller-Plathe method in non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. The Lennard-Jones potential was used to model interatomic interactions. The influence of transversal size and shape of a nanochannel on the thermal conductivity of liquid argon along the length of the channel has been investigated. The transversal size of nanochannel varied from 2.25 nm to 15 nm. The simulations revealed that the thermal conductivity weakly depends on the shape (square vs circular) of channel and scales with a cross-sectional area of nanochannel. It has been observed that thermal conductivity increases with an increase of the transversal size of the channel. Also, it reaches bulk values for some characteristic size of channel that depends strongly on density. Good agreement of the computed thermal conductivities of liquid argon over a wide density range with the experimental data allowed the value of the characteristic size of channel as a function of density to be estimated. This value depends on density and varies from 5 nm to 11 nm.