Tao Ouyang

Thermal transport in hexagonal boron nitride nanoribbons

The thermal transport properties of hexagonal boron nitride nanoribbons (BNNRs) are investigated. By calculating the phonon spectrum and thermal conductance, it is found that the BNNRs possess excellent thermal transport properties. The thermal conductance of BNNRs can be comparable to that of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) and even exceed the latter below room temperature. A fitting formula is obtained to describe the features of thermal conductance in BNNRs, which reveals a critical role of the T(1.5) dependence in determining the thermal transport. In addition, an obviously anisotropic thermal transport phenomenon is observed in the nanoribbons. The thermal conductivity of zigzag-edged BNNRs is shown to be about 20% larger than that of armchair-edged nanoribbons at room temperature. The findings indicate that the BNNRs can be applied as important components of excellent thermal devices.

Thermal transport of isotopic-superlattice graphene nanoribbons with zigzag edge

Thermal transport properties of isotopic-superlattice graphene nanoribbons with zigzag edge (IS-ZGNRs) are investigated. We find that by isotopic superlattice modulation the thermal conductivity of a graphene nanoribbon can be reduced significantly. The thermal transport property of the IS-ZGNRs strongly depends on the superlattice period length and the isotopic mass. As the superlattice period length decreases, the thermal conductivity undergoes a transition from decreasing to increasing. This unique phenomenon is explained by analyzing the phonon transmission coefficient. While the effect of isotopic mass on the conductivity is monotone. Larger mass difference induces smaller thermal conductivity. In addition, the influence of the geometry size is also discussed. The results indicate that isotopic superlattice modulation offers an available way for improving the thermoelectric performance of graphene nanoribbons.

Large tunability of lattice thermal conductivity of monolayer silicene via mechanical strain

Strain engineering is one of the most promising and effective routes toward continuously tuning the electronic and optic properties of materials, while thermal properties are generally believed to be insensitive to mechanical strain. In this paper, the strain-dependent thermal conductivity of monolayer silicene under uniform biaxial tension is computed by solving the phonon Boltzmann transport equation with interatomic force constants extracted from first-principles calculations. Unlike the commonly believed understanding that thermal conductivity only slightly decreases with increased tensile strain for bulk materials, it is found that the thermal conductivity of silicene can increase dramatically with strain. Depending on the size, the maximum thermal conductivity of strained silicene can be a few times higher than that of the unstrained case. Such an unusual strain dependence is mainly attributed to the dramatic enhancement in the acoustic phonon lifetime. Such enhancement plausibly originates from the flattening of the buckling of the silicene structure upon stretching, which is unique for silicene as compared with other common two-dimensional materials. Our findings offer perspectives on modulating the thermal properties of low-dimensional structures for applications such as thermoelectrics, thermal circuits, and nanoelectronics.

Thermal transport and thermoelectric properties of beta-graphyne nanostructures

Graphyne, an allotrope of graphene, is currently a hot topic in the carbon-based nanomaterials research community. Taking beta-graphyne as an example, we performed a comprehensive study of thermal transport and related thermoelectric properties by means of nonequilibrium Greens function (NEGF). Our simulation demonstrated that thermal conductance of beta-graphyne is only approximately 26% of that of the graphene counterpart and also shows evident anisotropy. Meanwhile, thermal conductance of armchair beta-graphyne nanoribbons (A-BGYNRs) presents abnormal stepwise width dependence. As for the thermoelectric property, we found that zigzag beta-graphyne nanoribbons (Z-BGYNRs) possess superior thermoelectric performance with figure of merit value achieving 0.5 at room temperature, as compared with graphene nanoribbons (~0.05). Aiming at obtaining a better thermoelectric coefficient, we also investigated Z-BGYNRs with geometric modulations. The results show that the thermoelectric performance can be enhanced dramatically (figure of merit exceeding 1.5 at room temperature), and such enhancement strongly depends on the width of the nanoribbons and location and quantity of geometric modulation. Our findings shed light on transport properties of beta-graphyne as high efficiency thermoelectrics. We anticipate that our simulation results could offer useful guidance for the design and fabrication of future thermoelectric devices.

Thermal conductance modulator based on folded graphene nanoribbons

Based on folded graphene nanoribbons, we report a thermal conductance modulator which performs analogous operations as the rheostat in electronic circuits. This fundamental device can controllably and reversibly modulate the thermal conductance by varying the geometric structures and its tuning range can be up to 40% of the conductance of unfolded nanoribbons (∼1 nm wide and 7–15 nm long). Under this modulation, the conductance shows a linearly dependence on the folded angle, while undergoes a transition with the variation of the inter-layer distance. This primary thermal device may have great potential applications for phononic circuits and nanoscale thermal management.

Thermoelectric properties of gamma-graphyne nanoribbons and nanojunctions

Using the Nonequilibrium Greens function approach, we investigate the thermoelectric properties of gamma-graphyne nanostructures. Compared with the graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), gamma-graphyne nanoribbons (GYNRs) are found to possess superior thermoelectric performance. Its thermoelectric figure of merit ZT is about 3∼13 times larger than that in the GNRs. Meanwhile, the results show that the thermoelectric efficiency of GYNRs decreases as the ribbon width increases, while it increases monotonically with temperature. For the gamma-graphyne nanojunctions (GYNJs), the value of ZT increases dramatically as the width discrepancy between the left and right leads becomes more obvious. This improvement is mainly originated from the fact that the enhanced thermopower and degraded thermal conductance (including the electron and phonon contributions) outweigh the reduction of electronic conductance. Moreover, it is found that the thermoelectric behavior of GYNJs also depends on the geometric shape, which is explain...

First-principles study of thermal transport in nitrogenated holey graphene

Nitrogenated holey graphene (NHG), a new two-dimensional graphene variant with a large fundamental direct band gap, has recently been successfully synthesized via a simple wet-chemical reaction. Motivated by its unique geometry and novel properties, we investigated the phonon transport properties of the material by combining first-principle calculations and the phonon Boltzmann transport equation. The lattice thermal conductivity of NHG at room temperature is predicted to be about 82.22 W mK-1, which is almost two orders of magnitude lower than that of graphene (about 3500 W mK-1). Deviating from the traditional understanding that thermal transport is usually largely contributed by the acoustic phonon modes for most suspended 2D materials, both out-of-plane flexural acoustic (ZA) and optical phonon modes make a more or less equal contribution, and their combination abnormally dominates the overall thermal transport in NHG. The major three-phonon process in NHG is further analyzed and the scattering between the acoustic and optical phonon modes like [Formula: see text] is the main phonon process channel. Meanwhile, the mean free path distribution of different phonon modes is calculated for the purpose of the thermal management of NHG-based devices. Our results elucidate the unusual thermal transport properties of NHG as compared with the representative case of graphene, and underpin its potential application for use by the thermal management community.

Lattice thermal conductivity of borophene from first principle calculation

The phonon transport property is a foundation of understanding a material and predicting the potential application in mirco/nano devices. In this paper, the thermal transport property of borophene is investigated by combining first-principle calculations and phonon Boltzmann transport equation. At room temperature, the lattice thermal conductivity of borophene is found to be about 14.34 W/mK (error is about 3%), which is much smaller than that of graphene (about 3500 W/mK). The contributions from different phonon modes are qualified, and some phonon modes with high frequency abnormally play critical role on the thermal transport of borophene. This is quite different from the traditional understanding that thermal transport is usually largely contributed by the low frequency acoustic phonon modes for most of suspended 2D materials. Detailed analysis further reveals that the scattering between the out-of-plane flexural acoustic mode (FA) and other modes likes FA + FA/TA/LA/OP ↔ TA/LA/OP is the predominant phonon process channel. Finally the vibrational characteristic of some typical phonon modes and mean free path distribution of different phonon modes are also presented in this work. Our results shed light on the fundamental phonon transport properties of borophene, and foreshow the potential application for thermal management community.

Five low energy phosphorene allotropes constructed through gene segments recombination

Based on the crystal structures of the previously proposed low energy η-P and θ-P, five new phosphorene allotropes were predicted through gene segments recombination method. These five new phosphorene allotropes are confirmed dynamically stable and energetically more favorable than their parents (η-P and θ-P). Especially, the XX-XX type G1-P is confirmed energetically more favorable than most of all the previously proposed phosphorene allotropes, including black phosphorene and blue phosphorene, which is highly expected to be synthesized in future experiment through vapor deposition or epitaxial growth method like blue β-P. The calculated results also show that such a new promising phosphorene allotrope G1-P is a potential candidate for application in nano-electronics according to its middle band gap of about 1.491 eV from DFT-HSE06 calculation.

Diameter Dependence of Lattice Thermal Conductivity of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes: Study from Ab Initio

The effects of temperature, tube length, defects, and surface functionalization on the thermal conductivity (κ) of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) were well documented in literature. However, diameter dependence of thermal conductivity of SWCNTs received less attentions. So far, diverse trends of the diameter dependence have been discussed by different methods and all the previous results were based on empirical interatomic potentials. In this paper, we emphasize to clarify accurate κ values of SWCNTs with different diameters and in-plane κ of graphene. All the studies were under the framework of anharmonic lattice dynamics and Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) based on first principle calculations. We try to infer the right trend of diameter dependent thermal conductivity of SWCNTs. We infer that graphene is the limitation as SWCNT with an infinite diameter. We analyzed the thermal conductivity contributions from each phonon mode in SWCNTs to explain the trend. Meanwhile, we also identify the extremely low thermal conductivity of ultra-thin SWCNTs.