Effect of substrate on thermal conductivity of single-walled carbon nanotubes

¹  Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences - Moscow 119991, Russia
²  Nonlinear Physics Center, Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
³  Department of Physics and Center for Nonlinear Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University - Hong Kong, China
⁴  Department of Physics, University of Houston - Houston, TX 77204-5005, USA

Corresponding author: asavin@center.chph.ras.ru

Received: 10 June 2009
Accepted: 9 October 2009

Abstract

We analyze numerically the thermal conductivity of single-walled carbon nanotubes placed on a flat rigid substrate. We demonstrate that the character of thermal conductivity depends crucially on the interaction between the nanotube and the substrate. In particular, we reveal that unlike the well-established anomalous thermal conductivity of isolated carbon nanotubes, the nanotube placed on a substrate demonstrates normal thermal conductivity due to the appearance of a narrow gap in the frequency spectrum of acoustic phonons.