Enhanced thermal transport across multilayer graphene and water by interlayer functionalization

BY Cao and JH Zou and GJ Hu and GX Cao, APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS, 112, 041603 (2018).

DOI: 10.1063/1.5018749

Graphene has attracted enormous attention due to its extraordinary physical properties, which have potential for increasing the thermal conductivity of nanocomposites or nanofluids, and the thermal resistance between graphene and the surrounding matrices arises as an important issue. In this paper, the thermal transport at the graphene-water interface is investigated by molecular dynamics simulations. The interfacial thermal resistance decreases with the graphene layer number. Interlayer functionalization by oxygen atoms is applied to tune the interfacial thermal resistance. A peak thermal resistance reduction of nearly 50% is generated with the oxygen ratio of only 0.5% for two-layer graphene. Based on the analyses of vibrational density of states, it is found that lower thermal resistance is consistent with more vibrational density of states overlaps at the interface. Our results are instructive for improving the interfacial thermal transport in graphene-based nanocomposites and nanofluids. Published by AIP Publishing.

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