Molecular Dynamics Study on Thermal Conductivity of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

In this paper, we study the thermal conductivities of sing-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and CNTs-based nanocomposites using molecular dynamics simulations. Length dependence of the thermal conductivity of (5, 5) carbon nanotube at 300 K and 1000 K is simulated. At room temperature the thermal conductivity shows linear length dependence with the tube length less than 40 nm, which indicates the completely ballistic transport. The thermal conductivity increases with the increase of the nanotube length, but the increase rate decreases as the length increases. It shows that the phonon transport transits from ballistic to diffusive. In the simulations, the power exponent of the thermal conductivity of carbon nanotube to the tube length decreases by decaying exponential function as the tube length increases. We also observe a decrease of the low-dimensional effects by the surrounding matters. A carbon-nanotube-atom-fixed and -activated scheme of non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations is put forward to extract the thermal conductivity of carbon nanotubes embedded in solid argon. Though a 6.5% volume fraction of CNTs increases the composite thermal conductivity by about twice larger than that of the pure basal material, the thermal conductivity of CNTs embedded in solids is found to be decreased by 1/8–1/5 with reference to that of pure ones. The decrease of the intrinsic thermal conductivity of the solid-embedded CNTs and the thermal interface resistance are demonstrated to be responsible for the results.