Phonon Tunneling Explains Heat Transfer Across Small Gaps

[Guest_Jim_*]

Whether it is hot or cold, heat transfer is important to us and in most cases it is well understood. For situations are covered by convection, conduction, or radiation, but at the small scale of a nanometer or less, things get harder to explain. That has changed now, thanks to researchers at MIT who have found that quantum tunneling can explain how heat can jump the gap.

When discussing heat at small scales, phonons must be part of the conversation as they are the energy units for vibrational energy and heat. Exactly explaining how phonons move has been a challenge for a long time now, as some theories skip over what happens at the atomic scale and others have obvious flaws to them. To find the solution, the MIT researchers turned to the microscopic Maxwell's equations, which are a form of the better known Maxwell's equations that govern electricity and magnetism. When these were applied the researchers found that phonons could actually tunnel across gaps between objects separated by just one nanometer or less. Tunneling is a quantum mechanical phenomenon where a particle or wave will skip over, or tunnel through a barrier it normally should not be able to.

With this answer, we have a more complete understanding of how heat flows, as now that understanding finally reaches to the nanoscale. It of course has practical applications wherever heat transfers, especially at very small scales.

Source: MIT

[HarryTaco]

Ima gonna git me some of that Phonon and make it into a paste.  Then im gonna slap a goober of it onna my heet sink and scroooh it down!!  If'n I lak it, then im gonna sell it as Maxwell's Phonon Paste,  the best for yur heet sink. :rofl: