2024/08/21 by Cillian Cockrell, Cockrell, C., M. Withington +17
Materials Science · #FOS: Physical sciences #Material Dynamics and Properties #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.03775
openalex publication_date 2024/08/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We use extensive molecular dynamics simulations to calculate thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity in two common molten salts, LiF and KCl. Our analysis includes the total thermal conductivity and intrinsic conductivity involving mass currents measured experimentally. The latter shows good agreement with the experimental data. We also calculate their key thermodynamic properties such as constant-pressure and constant-volume specific heats. We subsequently compare the results to the lower bound for thermal diffusivity expressed in terms of fundamental physical constants. Using this comparison and recent theoretical insights into thermodynamic and transport properties in liquids, we interpret thermal properties on the basis of atomistic dynamics and phonon excitations. We finally find that thermal diffusivity of molten salts is close to their kinematic viscosity.