Electrical and Thermal Transport in Metallic Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes on Insulating Substrates

TL;DR

This study models electrical and thermal transport in metallic single-wall carbon nanotubes on insulating substrates, revealing how self-heating affects breakdown and conduction, with implications for their use in nanoelectronic interconnects.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled electrical-thermal model accounting for Joule heating and phonon scattering, highlighting the interface's role in thermal conductance and nanotube breakdown.

Findings

Breakdown voltage scales linearly with nanotube length (~5 V/μm).

Thermal conductance limited by SWNT-substrate interface (~0.17 W/K/m).

Electrons contribute less than 15% to thermal conductivity at room temperature.

Abstract

We analyze transport in metallic single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) on insulating substrates over the bias range up to electrical breakdown in air. To account for Joule self-heating, a temperature-dependent Landauer model for electrical transport is coupled with the heat conduction equation along the nanotube. The electrical breakdown voltage of SWNTs in air is found to scale linearly with their length, approximately as 5 V/um; we use this to deduce a thermal conductance between SWNT and substrate g ~ 0.17 +/- 0.03 W/K/m per tube length, which appears limited by the SWNT-substrate interface rather than the thermal properties of the substrate itself. We examine the phonon scattering mechanisms limiting electron transport, and find the strong temperature dependence of the optical phonon absorption rate to have a remarkable influence on the electrical resistance of micron-length nanotubes. Further analysis reveals that unlike in typical metals, electrons are responsible for less than 15% of the total thermal conductivity of metallic nanotubes around room temperature, and this contribution decreases at high bias or higher temperatures. For interconnect applications of metallic SWNTs, significant self-heating may be avoided if power densities are limited below 5 uW/um, or if the SWNT-surrounding thermal interface is optimized.