Heat Transfer between an Individual Carbon Nanotube and Gas Environment in a Wide Knudsen Number Regime

Abstract

Applications of carbon nanotube (CNT) and graphene in thermal management have recently attracted significant attention. However, the lack of efficient prediction formula for heat transfer coefficient between nanomaterials and gas environment limits the further development of this technique. In this work, a kinetic model has been established to predict the heat transfer coefficient of an individual CNT in gas environment. The heat dissipation around the CNT is governed by molecular collisions, and outside the collision layer, the heat conduction is dominant. At nanoscales, the natural convection can be neglected. In order to describe the intermolecular collisions around the CNT quantitatively, a correction factor 1/24 is introduced and agrees well with the experimental observation. The prediction of the present model is in good agreement with our experimental results in free molecular regime. Further, a maximum heat transfer coefficient occurs at a critical diameter of several nanometers, providing guidelines on the practical design of CNT‐based heat spreaders.