Kapitza thermal conductance at the interface between Lennard-Jones crystals using non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations

We characterize the thermal Kapitza conductance between Lennard-Jones solids using non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. We consider a series of perfect interfaces between mass-mismatched solids. We show that both the acoustic mismatch model (AMM) and the diffuse mismatch model (DMM) fail to predict the interfacial conductance even for large acoustic mismatched solids. This poor agreement may be explained by the use of equilibrium distributions of phonons in the expression of the conductance. On the other hand, we show that an extension of AMM taking into account the out-of-equilibrium phonon distribution on both sides of the interface leads to a good agreement with the simulation results, even for interfaces between almost similar materials. This opens the way to understand interfacial heat transport across real semi-conductors and dielectrics.