Thermal property of bent graphene nanorribons

Abstract

Comparing the thermal conductance features and mechanism between carbon nanotubes and graphene nanoribbons reveal the key role of intrinsic in-plane and out-of-plane phonon modes coupling in effectively influencing the materials’ thermal conductivity. The finding allows us to successfully propose an analytic intrinsic phonon mode-coupling-tuning model to control thermal properties of bent graphene nanorribons (BGNRs) with bending angle varying. The derived thermal conductivity using this method is larger in zigzag-edged and smaller in armchair-edged BGNRs than that of the corresponding single wall carbon nanotubes, respectively. The decrease of both thermal conductivity and specific heat as bending angle of BGNRs increasing due to the growing coupling between the intrinsic in-plane and out-of-plane modes present enormous potential of the BGNRs in acting as excellent components in important thermal devices.