Thermal transport properties of rolled graphene nanoribbons

Abstract

Using nonequilibrium Green's function method, we investigate the influence of the curvature and edge effects on the thermal transport during the process of rolling graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) into carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in the transverse direction. The curvature effect results in a slight decrease in the thermal conductance of GNRs, which is remarkably different from that in the longitudinal direction. The curvature and edge effects show a strong size and chirality dependence, while the curvature effect is more sensitive to the size. When the size equals to 12.8 nm (49.2 nm) with the zigzag (armchair) edge, the edge effect results in the reduction of thermal conductance of 2.4% (13.0%) as compared to the corresponding CNT, but the curvature effect vanishes.