Understanding thermal conductance across multi-wall carbon nanotube contacts: Role of nanotube curvature

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• 作者：Vikas Varshney^a ; ^b ; ^{vikas.varshney.1.ctr@us.af.mil} ; Jonghoon Lee^a ; ^b ; Deyu Li^c ; Joshua S. Brown^d ; ¹ ; Barry L. Farmer^a ; Andrey A. Voevodin^a ; ² ; Ajit K. Roy^a ; ^{ajit.roy@us.af.mil}
• 关键词：Molecular dynamics ; MWCNTs ; Thermal transport ; Interface thermal conductance ; Phonon focusing
• 刊名：Carbon
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：April 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：114
• 期：Complete
• 页码：15-22
• 全文大小：2056 K
• 卷排序：114

文摘

Thermal energy transfer at the interconnects in carbon based nanoelectronic devices plays a crucial role towards their performance as well as their reliability. In this study, we investigate such thermal energy transfer across physically interacting multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) as a function of their diameter, length, number of walls, inter-layer chirality differences, and different angular orientation of the cross-contact. Using non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations for phonon energy transfer, we predict that MWCNTs' curvature and their number of walls emerge as two critical factors, with each of them determining the limiting value of the thermal conductance across MWCNT contacts in different diameter regimes. For thinner MWCNTs, the curvature determines the limiting value of the conductance and leads to an interesting non-monotonic character, while the number of walls dominates the contact conductance for large diameter MWCNTs. We discuss their respective origins and distinguish their governing regimes using several arguments –focusing of phonons, and confinement of the phonon focusing cone, large mean free path of graphite– and how they modulate radial thermal transport, leading to observed trends of thermal conductance across MWCNT contacts.