title: Thermal conductivity and thermal rectification in unzipped carbon nanotubes.
abstract: We study the thermal transport in completely unzipped carbon nanotubes, which are called graphene nanoribbons, partially unzipped carbon nanotubes, which can be seen as carbon-nanotube-graphene-nanoribbon junctions, and carbon nanotubes by using molecular dynamics simulations. It is found that the thermal conductivity of a graphene nanoribbon is much less than that of its perfect carbon nanotube counterparts because of the localized phonon modes at the boundary. A partially unzipped carbon nanotube has the lowest thermal conductivity due to additional localized modes at the junction region. More strikingly, a significant thermal rectification effect is observed in both partially unzipped armchair and zigzag carbon nanotubes. Our results suggest that carbon-nanotube-graphene-nanoribbon junctions can be used in thermal energy control.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Centre for Computational Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Xiaoxi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ni
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Baowen
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Li