Impact of Vacancies on Thermal Transport of Defected Zigzag Stanene Nanoribbon: A Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study

Abstract

Stanene, a two-dimensional buckled honeycomb material, exhibits interesting thermal, mechanical, and electrical properties suitable for electrical and thermoelectric applications. In this study, we have performed an equilibrium molecular dynamic simulation to investigate the impact of different types of vacancies on thermal transport of zigzag stanene nanoribbon using the modified embedded-atom method (MEAM) potential. Thermal conductivity is found to decrease as defect concentration is increased. The decay rate is higher at low defect concentration but gradually decreases at higher defect concentration. Moreover, a comparative study shows that zigzag chirality displays a higher thermal conductivity than its armchair counterpart at all defect concentration. Furthermore, thermal conductivity of defected stanene nanoribbon is observed to decrease with increase of temperature. Such study would further encourage optimized thermal transport in stanene nanostructure based thermoelectric devices.