Abstract

Understanding how gas molecules scatter near solid surfaces enables better fabrication of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and design engineering flow systems that operate under low pressures. Scattering behaviours can be simplified and described by gas-surface interactions (GSIs) models (also known as scattering kernels) with a few accommodation coefficients (ACs), in the form of probability density function (PDF).

In this talk, I will demonstrate how we exploit the high fidelity molecular dynamics simulations to accurately resolve the trafectories of molecules interacting with a surface. Then, I will illustrate this approach in the context of kerogen and smooth metal surfaces, aimed at unravelling the impact of porosity and physisorption on the scattering dynamics of gas molecules.

Biography

Mt Yichong Chen is currently a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. He received his BEng degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh in 2019, and an MSc degree in Engineering Fluid Mechanics from Imperial College London in 2020. His present research focuses on the scattering behaviour of gas molecules on the solid surface, which is essential to develop/find accurate boundary conditions for kinetic models that describe rarified gas dynamics. In particular, he is investigating how the atomic-scale roughness and adsoprtion layering affect the scattering dynamics and gas transport near the surface.-