Interfacial thermal conductance of partially unzipped carbon nanotubes: Linear scaling and exponential decay

Abstract

The development of integrated circuits urgently demands improved understanding of interfacial thermal transport at the nanoscale. We report a systematical nonequilibrium Green's function study on thermal transport in a class of experimentally available carbon-based nanostructures, partially unzipped carbon nanotubes (PUCNTs), where unusual interfacial thermal transport behaviors are revealed. We find that thermal conductance of PUCNTs shows a perfect linear dependence on the width of the unzipped part and an exponential decay (to a finite value) with the length of the unzipped part. The exponential length dependence observed at interfaces is a pure quantum phenomenon without classical counterpart. The improved understanding of nanoscale thermal transport can find applications in designing high-performance thermal management and/or thermoelectric nanodevices.