Anisotropic Heat Transfer of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Heat transfer of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) in practical situations is investigated using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Attenuation of the expected high thermal conductivity was simulated by mixing C-13 isotope impurities to SWNTs or binding two SWNTs with different chirality with a junction structure in between. The heat transfer through the junction can be expressed with the thermal boundary conductance by considering a virtual boundary at the junction. The lateral heat conduction was compared with the thermal boundary conductance at the interfaces between an SWNT and surrounding materials. By applying the lumped capacity method on the non-stationary molecular dynamics simulations, the thermal boundary conductance of an SWNT bundle and an SWNT confining water were calculated. Finally, some conventional properties were estimated to characterize the anisotropic heat conduction.