Thermal Transport at Carbon Nanotube-Graphene Junction

Abstract

We present results of a molecular dynamics study to analyze thermal transport at carbon nanotube (CNT)-graphene junctions comprising of single layer graphene and (6,6) armchair single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). Two possible junction types with different degrees of sp2 and sp3 hybridization are investigated. Reverse Non-Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics (RNEMD) simulations are used to obtain the thermal conductivities in these hybrid structures and also analyze the role of the interfacial thermal resistance at the SWCNT-graphene junctions in limiting thermal transport. The highest out-of-plane (along the SWCNT axis) thermal conductivity of a hybrid structure with a CNT-graphene junction was obtained to be 158.9±1.2 W/m-K when the junction comprised of only sp2 bonds with an interpillar distance of 15 nm and a pillar height of 200 nm. The highest in-plane thermal conductivity (along the graphene layer plane) with two CNT-graphene junctions was found to be 392.2±9.9 W/m-K with junctions comprising of only sp2 bonds and an interpillar distance of 20 nm and a pillar height of 25 nm. In all cases, junctions with mixed sp2/sp3 hybridization showed higher interfacial thermal resistance than junctions with pure sp2 bonds, and the thermal interfacial resistance was found to be weakly dependent on the length of CNT and the interpillar distance. The highest interfacial thermal resistance measured across the CNT-graphene junction was 3.10×10−6 K-cm2/W when the junction comprised of mixed sp2/sp3 bonds and with 15 nm interpillar distance and 50 nm pillar height.