Molecular dynamics study of thermal conductivity of single-walled carbon nanotube with Stone-Wales defects

Abstract

The thermal properties of carbon nanotube which possesses very high thermal conductivity comparable with diamond are of great interest in controlling the thermal properties of nanotube devices. Since carbon nanotube practically has defects, i.e., Stone-Wales defect, point defect and so on, the thermal conductivity should be lower than the ideal thermal conductivity. The experimental study of thermal conductivity for nanotube with defects has not been studied yet, because the direct defect observation is usually quite difficult even by using the state-of-the-art microscopies. In this paper, we estimate thermal conductivity of single walled carbon nanotubes with and without Stone-Wales defects using conventional molecular dynamics simulation, and discuss the effect of the defects to the thermal conductivity.