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.

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微米级和纳米级流动与传热的热力学：小型回顾

在过去的几十年里，对微米级和纳米级传输过程的建模和理解引起了越来越多的关注和广泛的研究。在这篇小综述中，我们旨在总结我们在微米和纳米尺度流动与传热的非平衡热力学方面的最新进展。特别强调界面处的熵产生，由于粒子边界相互作用的强非平衡性质，它在小尺度上起着主导作用。我们还分别从体熵和界面熵产生的角度证明了宏观流体动力学方程和非平衡边界条件的热力学相容性，并得到了微观粒子动力学理论的支持。本综述将有助于更清晰地阐述微/纳米尺度的热力学及其统计力学论证，从而促进其未来的进一步发展。