First Principles Study of Thermal Conductance Across Cu/Graphene/Cu Nanocomposition and the Effect of Hydrogenation

In this work, the interfacial thermal conductance across Cu/graphene/Cu interfaces is investigated using the density functional theory (DFT) and the nonequilibrium Green’s function (NEGF) method. In order to study how hydrogenation of graphene affects thermal transport behaviors at the interfaces of Cu/graphene/Cu, we also analyze the interfacial thermal conductance across Cu/hydrogenated-graphene/Cu (Cu/H-graphene/Cu) with both double-sided and single-sided hydrogenated graphene. Our results show that, the interfacial thermal conductance across Cu/H-graphene/Cu interfaces is almost twice of the value across Cu/graphene/Cu interfaces. For Cu/H-graphene/Cu with double-sided hydrogenated graphene (Cu/DH-graphene/Cu), the hydrogen atoms between graphene and Cu layers provide additional thermal transport channels. While for Cu/H-graphene/Cu with single-sided hydrogenated graphene (Cu/SH-graphene/Cu), the hydrogen atoms not only provide additional thermal transport channels at the hydrogenated side of graphene, but also reduce the equilibrium separation between graphene and Cu layers at the non-hydrogenated side of graphene due to the transfer of massive electrons, which enhances the interface coupling between graphene and Cu layers. The phonon transmission shows that both double-sided and single-sided hydrogenation of graphene can increase the heat transport across the interface. Our calculation indicates that the interfacial thermal conductance of Cu/graphene/Cu nanocomposition can be improved by hydrogenation.