Control of electron- And phonon-derived thermal conductances in carbon nanotubes

Abstract

We present a method for controlling the electron- and phonon-derived thermal conductances in carbon nanotubes with vacancy defects involving numerical analysis based on the nonequilibrium electron/phonon Green's function method. The electron-derived thermal conductance can be controlled by tuning the external gate voltage because the resonant backscattering level (dangling σ-bond states around vacancies) can be shifted by the gate voltage. In contrast, thermal annealing is effective in increasing the phonon-derived thermal conductance because the quasi-bound phonon state localized around a vacancy disappears due to the annealing-induced vacancy rearrangement. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.