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

J Al-Ghalith and H Xu and T Dumitrica, PHYSICAL REVIEW MATERIALS, 1, 56001 (2017).

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.1.056001

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.

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