Chirality- and thickness-dependent thermal conductivity of few-layer graphene: a molecular dynamics study

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics to analyze how the thermal conductivity of few-layer graphene varies with layer number and chirality, revealing layer-dependent decay and temperature effects.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the layer and chirality dependence of thermal conductivity in graphene using molecular dynamics simulations.

Findings

Thermal conductivity decreases monotonically with more layers.

Zigzag graphene has higher thermal conductivity only at high temperatures.

Single-layer graphene exhibits better ballistic transport than multi-layer graphene.

Abstract

The thermal conductivity of graphene nanoribbons (layer from 1 to 8 atomic planes) is investigated by using the nonequilibrium molecular dynamics method. We present that the room-temperature thermal conductivity decays monotonically with the number of the layers in few-layer graphene. The superiority of zigzag graphene in thermal conductivity is only available in high temperature region and disappears in multi-layer case. It is explained that the phonon spectral shrink in high frequency induces the change of thermal conductivity. It is also reported that single-layer graphene has better ballistic transport property than the multi-layer graphene.