Collapsed carbon nanotubes as building blocks for high-performance thermal materials

Jihong Al-Ghalith, Hao Xu, and Traian Dumitrică

Phys. Rev. Materials 1, 056001 – Published 25 October 2017

Abstract

The influence of collapsed shape on the thermal transport of carbon nanotubes is studied by nonequilibrium molecular dynamics. Nanotubes of different lengths, diameters, chiralities, and degrees of twist are simulated in the regime in which the thermal transport extends from ballistic to diffusive. In contrast with graphene nanoribbons, which are known to exhibit substantial rough-edge and cross-plain phonon scatterings, the collapsed tubes preserve the quasiballistic phononic transport encountered in cylindrical nanotubes. Stacked-collapsed nanotube architectures, closely related with the strain-induced aligned tubes occurring in stretched nanotube sheets, are shown to inherit the ultrahigh thermal conductivities of individual tubes, and are therefore proposed to form highways for efficient heat transport in lightweight composite materials.

Received 11 July 2017
Revised 29 September 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.1.056001

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Mechanical deformation Thermal conductivity

Functional materials Nanotubes

Molecular dynamics

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Jihong Al-Ghalith¹, Hao Xu², and Traian Dumitrică^1,2,*

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Minnesota 55455, USA
²Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Minnesota 55455, USA

^*Corresponding author: dtraian@umn.edu

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Issue

Vol. 1, Iss. 5 — October 2017

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