Thermal contact resistance between two nanoparticles

We compute the thermal conductance between two nanoparticles in contact based on the molecular dynamics technique. The contact is generated by letting both particles stick together under van der Waals attractions. The thermal conductance is derived from the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and the time fluctuations of the exchanged power. We show that the conductance is proportional to the atoms involved in the thermal interaction. In the case of silica, the atomic contribution to the thermal conductance is in the range of 0.5 to 3 nW. K-1. This result fits to theoretical predictions based on characteristic times of the temperature fluctuation. The order of magnitude of the contact conductance is 1 mu W.K-1 when the cross section ranges from 1 to 10 nm(2).