A molecular dynamics simulation of liquid-vapour-solid system near triple- phase contact line of flow boiling in a microchannel

In this paper, the liquid-vapour-solid system near triple-phase contact line in a microchannel heat sink is studied numerically. Molecular dynamics (MD) method is employed aiming to get a microscopic insight into the complex liquid-vapour-solid system. In the present model, the Lennard-Jones potential is applied to mono-atomic molecules of argon as liquid and vapour, and platinum as solid substrates, to perform a simulation of non-equilibrium molecular dynamics. The results of numerical simulation suggest that for a complete wetting system, such as argon on a platinum substrate, there is a non-evaporating liquid film with thickness in nanometres existing on the heating solid surface. The minimum film thickness near the triplephase contact line under different conditions of the substrate temperature is predicted. The thickness of such an ultra-thin liquid film varies only slightly with the number of argon molecules but decreases with the increase of heating substrate temperature. The decrease in potential energy toward the region near the heating wall is considerably large indicating that the interactions of solid and liquid molecules are very strong.