GAS-WALL INTERACTIONS UNDER RAREFIED CONDITIONS

The past decade has seen a considerable growth in portable devices with mobile connectivity. This growth has been enabled by the development of high capacity telecommunication networks globally. Individuals require high data transfer capabilities to remotely stream large information sets (i.e. HD video) and this is leading to greater demands for next generation networks (i.e. 5G). To ensure this growth continues, hardware devices must be smaller, more energy-efficient and provide greater functionality. This requirement poses a thermal management challenge, increasing heat transfer density significantly. Novel materials and cooling methods, which are engineered at the micro- and nanoscale, are necessary to address this. In this paper the focus is on the numerical modelling of the gas-wall interactions that determine the heat transfer.