Analysis of thermal conductance of carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are being looked at as a promising material for the submicron or nanometre scale electronic and electro-mechanical devices. At this size, the thermal transport properties of the components become extremely important with regard to the proper functioning of the device. As it is difficult to accurately measure these properties in case of nano devices, predictions using modeling and simulation play an important role in the design of these devices. In this paper, we have estimated and analyzed the thermal conductance of one single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) depending upon its geometrical features. We have further extended the simulation to predict the thermal conductance of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs). It was found that the SWNT depicts high thermal conductance which depends largely on its geometry and chirality and an MWNT shows very high conductance varying with tube diameter, length and number of shells.