Thermal Conductivity of Carbon Nanotubes With Defects

Abstract

The high thermal conductivities of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) measured experimentally and predicted from theory suggest that they are good candidates for next-generation thermal management materials. The quantities of CNTs needed in applications preclude the use of pristine products. Limited work, however, has been done to study thermal transport in CNTs with defects. In this paper, the thermal conductivities of pristine CNTs and CNTs with various defect types (adatoms, single vacancies, double vacancies, and Stone-Wales) are systematically predicted using molecular dynamics simulation and a direct application of the Fourier law. We investigate the correlation between the thermal conductivity and defect energy.