Enhancement of interfacial thermal conductance of SiC by overlapped carbon nanotubes and intertube atoms

TL;DR

This study introduces a novel method of adding intertube atoms to improve the interfacial thermal conductance between SiC and carbon nanotube arrays, using molecular dynamics simulations to analyze the effects and mechanisms involved.

Contribution

The paper presents a new approach of adding intertube atoms to significantly enhance interfacial thermal conductance in SiC-CNT structures, supported by detailed molecular dynamics analysis.

Findings

Intertube atoms significantly increase ITC.

ITC depends on temperature and number of intertube atoms.

Vibrational density of states explains the enhancement mechanism.

Abstract

We proposed a new way, adding intertube atoms, to enhance interfacial thermal conductance (ITC) between SiC-carbon nanotube (CNT) array structure. Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics method was used to study the ITC. The results show that the intertube atoms can significantly enhance the ITC. The dependence of ITC on both the temperature and the number of intertube atoms are shown. The mechanism is analyzed by calculating probability distributions of atomic forces and vibrational density of states. Our study may provide some guidance on enhancing the ITC of CNT-based composites.