Enhancement of Interfacial Thermal Transport by Carbon Nanotube-Graphene Junction

Thermal transport across material interfaces is crucial for many engineering applications. For example, in microelectronics, small interfacial thermal resistance is desired to achieve efficient heat dissipation. Carbon nanotube (CNT) has extremely high thermal conductivity and can potentially serve as an efficient thermal interface material. However, heat dissipation through CNTs is limited by the large thermal resistance at the CNT-material interface. Here we have proposed a CNT-graphene junction structure to enhance the interfacial thermal transport. Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations have been carried out to show that the thermal conductance can be significantly enhanced by adding a single graphene layer in between CNT and silicon. The mechanism of enhanced thermal transport is attributed to the efficient thermal transport between CNT and graphene and the good contact between graphene and silicon surface.