Axial tensile strain effects on the contact thermal conductance between cross contacted single-walled carbon nanotubes

Abstract

The axial strain effects on the contact thermal conductance between two cross contacted single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are assessed using nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulation. The results show that the contact thermal conductance can be decreased by ∼44% as the axial strain increases from 0 to 10%. The calculated vibrational density of state reveals that the enhanced phonon scattering resulting from the blue shift of the low frequency phonon is the main factor leading to the reduction of the contact thermal conductance. We also studied the effect of the defects caused by hydrogenation and vacancy in SWCNTs on the contact thermal conductance and found that this effect can be neglected.