Thermal conductivity of monolayer hexagonal boron nitride: From defective to amorphous

Abstract

Through extensive molecular dynamics simulations, we completed the thermal transport properties study of the monolayer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) films from the defect state to the amorphous state. To this end, a defective h-BN model construction program has been developed, which can customize the nature of the defects and realize the transition from the defect state to the amorphous state. By performing homogeneous non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations based on Tersoff multi-body potential, the thermal conductivity results of large-size h-BN films have been achieved. For the defect state h-BN, we studied the effect of different defect types and concentrations on its thermal conductivity and verified it from the phonon mechanism. After the transition to two-dimensional amorphous BN, we discussed and analyzed the influence of amorphous concentration, amorphous defect ratio and temperature on its thermal transport properties. On this basis, the restriction relationship between phonon-phonon scattering term and phonon-defect scattering term was also proposed from the atomic level mechanisms. Our results constitute a step in the deterministic engineering of thermal management devices in 2D materials, and hold great promise for the application of h-BN defect engineering in the field of nanomaterial thermal design.