Heat Wave Driven by Nanoscale Mechanical Impact between C 60 and Graphene

This paper presents a novel physical phenomenon—heat wave propagation—at the atomic scale by investigating the collision of C60 molecules with a graphene sample through molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. A correlation between mechanical wave and temperature variation has been captured at the early stage of collision to demonstrate that temperature variations behave in a wave motion, which contradicts the concept in classical continuum mechanics, whereas later temperature variations exhibit the properties of a diffusion equation. This intriguing result, called wave-diffusion duality, offers an insight into the thermomechanical coupling phenomenon of nanodevices. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)NM.2153-5477.0000044. © 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers. CE Database subject headings: Nanotechnology; Wave propagation; Simulation; Diffusion; Temperature effects. Author keywords: Molecular dynamics; Graphene; Buckyball; Collision; Heat wave; Wave-diffusion duality.