Interfacial thermal transport between nanotubes

Abstract

There has been a significant amount of research in analyzing the thermal, electrical, and other physical properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). However, the energy transport mechanism at the contact of two CNTs is still not well understood. This study investigates the interfacial thermal interaction between two CNTs using molecular dynamics simulation and wavelet methods. We place the tubes in a crossed configuration and pass a high temperature pulse along one of the CNTs, while keeping other ends fixed, and analyze the interaction of this pulse with the other nanotube. We apply this technique to nanotubes of chirality ranging from (5,0) to (10,0) to observe the response of tubes with changing diameter. This thermal pulse analysis shows that the coupling between the two tubes is very weak and may be dominated by slow-moving phonon modes with high energy. We perform a wavelet analysis of thermal pulse propagation along a CNT and its impact on another CNT in cross contact. Wavelet transformations of the heat pulse show how different phonon modes are excited and how they evolve and propagate along the tube axis depending on its chirality.