Nonmonotonic heat dissipation phenomenon in close-packed hotspot systems

Transient heat dissipation in close-packed quasi-two-dimensional nanoline and three-dimensional nanocuboid hotspot systems is studied based on the phonon Boltzmann transport equation. It is found that, counterintuitively, the heat dissipation efficiency is not a monotonic function of the distance between adjacent nanoscale heat sources but reaches the highest value when this distance is comparable to the phonon mean free path. This is due to the competition of two thermal transport processes: quasiballistic transport when phonons escape from the nanoscale heat source and the scattering among phonons originating from the adjacent nanoscale heat source.