Thermodynamics of micro- and nano-scale flow and heat transfer: a mini-review

The modeling and understanding of micro- and nano-scale transport processes have raised increasing attention and extensive investigation during the past decades. In this mini-review, we aim to summarize our recent progress on the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of micro- and nano-scale flow and heat transfer. Special emphasis is put on the entropy generation at the interface, which plays a dominant role at small scale due to the strong non-equilibrium nature of particle-boundary interaction. We also prove the thermodynamic compatibility of both the macroscopic hydrodynamic equation and the non-equilibrium boundary conditions from the perspective of bulk and interfacial entropy generations respectively, as supported by the kinetic theory of microscopic particles. The present review will contribute to a clearer elaboration of thermodynamics at micro/nano-scale and its statistical mechanical demonstration, and thus will promote its further development in the future.