Thermal transport of graphene sheets with fractal defects

Abstract

Graphene combined with fractal structures would probably be a promising candidate design of an antenna for a wireless communication system. However, the thermal transport properties of fractal graphene, which would influence the properties of wireless communication systems, are unclear. In this paper, the thermal transport properties of graphene with a Sierpinski fractal structure were investigated via the reverse non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulation method. Simulation results indicated that the thermal conductivity of graphene with fractal defects decreased from 157.62 to 19.60 (W m−1 K−1) as the fractal level increased. Furthermore, visual display and statistical results of fractal graphene atomic heat flux revealed that with fractal levels increasing, the real heat flux paths twisted, and the angle distributions of atomic heat flux vectors enlarged from about (−30◦, 30◦) to about (−45◦, 45◦). In fact, the fractal structures decreased the real heat flow areas and extended the real heat flux paths, and enhanced the phonon scattering in the defect edges of the fractal graphene. Analyses of fractal graphene thermal transport characters in our work indicated that the heat transfer properties of fractal graphene dropped greatly as fractal levels increased, which would provide effective guidance to the design of antennae based on fractal graphene.