Anomalous behavior of liquid molecules near solid nanoparticles: Novel interpretation on thermal conductivity enhancement in nanofluids

Hypothesis: Recently, it has been reported that anomalous improvement in the thermal conductivity of nanofluid composed of base liquids and dispersed solid nanoparticles, compared to the theoretically pre-dicted value calculated from the particle fraction. Generally, the thermal conductivity values of gases and liquids are dominated by the mean free path of the molecules during translational motion. Herein, we present solid evidence showing the possible contribution of the vibrational behavior of liquid molecules around nanoparticles to increasing these thermal conductivities.Experiments: The behavior of liquid molecules in nanofluids containing SiO2 particles larger than 100 nm, which were dispersed in a 50 wt% aqueous solution of ethylene glycol, was investigated by means of small-angle neutron scattering, quasi-elastic neutron scattering, wide-angle X-ray scattering, and Raman spectroscopy.Findings: The vibrational changes in the liquid molecules caused by the interactions between the nanoparticles and liquid molecules surrounding the nanoparticles contributed majorly to the increase in the thermal conductivity values of the SiO2 nanofluids. Because the vibration of liquid molecules is equivalent to phonon conduction in solids, the increase in thermal conductivity of the suspension due to the presence of nanoparticles was inferred to be derived from the limitation of the translational diffu-sion, which induces a solid-like behavior in the liquid.(c) 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.