Title: Diameter-dependant thermal conductance models of carbon nanotubes

Authors: Liwei Shang, Ming Liu, Sansiri Tanachutiwat, Wei Wang

Addresses: Key Lab of Nanofabrication and Novel Device Integrated Technology, Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. ' Key Lab of Nanofabrication and Novel Device Integrated Technology, Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. ' College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, University at Albany, Albany, New York, USA. ' College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, University at Albany, Albany, New York, USA

Abstract: Carbon nanotube (CNT) bundle is a promising candidate for future electrothermal applications due to its superior thermal properties. A realistic CNT bundle is a mixture of single-wall/multi-wall CNTs due to the nature of bottom-up fabrication process. In order to utilise CNT bundle, its thermal performance analysis needs to be carried out considering both types of CNTs. In this paper, accurate thermal conductance models are introduced for CNTs and mixed CNT bundles considering the influence of diameter and other structure factors. The thermal performance estimation based on these models match the recent measurement results. Considering realistic CNT densities and geometries, the mixed bundle shows two to three times improvement over the copper wire counterpart in terms of thermal conductance.

Keywords: carbon nanotubes; CNT; mixed bundles; thermal conductance; modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNP.2008.020264

International Journal of Nanoparticles, 2008 Vol.1 No.2, pp.85 - 95

Published online: 11 Sep 2008 *

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