Graphene, in addition to its unique electronic and optical properties, reveals unusually high thermal conductivity. The fact that the thermal conductivity of large enough graphene sheets should be higher than that of basal planes of bulk graphite was predicted theoretically by Klemens. However, the exact mechanisms behind the drastic alteration of a material's intrinsic ability to conduct heat as its dimensionality changes from two to three dimensions remain elusive. The recent availability of high-quality few-layer graphene (FLG) materials allowed us to study dimensional crossover experimentally. Here we show that the room-temperature thermal conductivity changes from approximately 2,800 to approximately 1,300 W m(-1) K(-1) as the number of atomic planes in FLG increases from 2 to 4. We explained the observed evolution from two dimensions to bulk by the cross-plane coupling of the low-energy phonons and changes in the phonon Umklapp scattering. The obtained results shed light on heat conduction in low-dimensional materials and may open up FLG applications in thermal management of nanoelectronics.

Graphene was recently proposed as a material for heat removal owing to its extremely high thermal conductivity. We simulated heat propagation in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) circuits with and without graphene lateral heat spreaders. Numerical solutions of the heat-propagation equations were obtained using the finite-element method. The analysis was focused on the prototype SOI circuits with the metal-oxide-semiconductor fieldeffect transistors. It was found that the incorporation of graphene or few-layer graphene (FLG) layers with proper heat sinks can substantially lower the temperature of the localized hot spots. The maximum temperature in the transistor channels was studied as function of graphene's thermal conductivity and the thickness of FLG. The developed model and obtained results are important for the design of graphene heat spreaders and interconnects.

The structural and electronic properties of stanene/hexagonal boron nitride (Sn/h-BN) heterobilayer with different stacking patterns are studied using first principle calculations within the framework of density functional theory. The electronic band structure of different stacking patterns shows a direct band gap of ~30 meV at Dirac point and at the Fermi energy level with a Fermi velocity of ~0.53 × 106 ms−1. Linear Dirac dispersion relation is nearly preserved and the calculated small effective mass in the order of 0.05mo suggests high carrier mobility. Density of states and space charge distribution of the considered heterobilayer structure near the conduction and the valence bands show unsaturated π orbitals of stanene. This indicates that electronic carriers are expected to transport only through the stanene layer, thereby leaving the h-BN layer to be a good choice as a substrate for the heterostructure. We have also explored the modulation of the obtained band gap by changing the interlayer spacing between h-BN and Sn layer and by applying tensile biaxial strain to the heterostructure. A small increase in the band gap is observed with the increasing percentage of strain. Our results suggest that, Sn/h-BN heterostructure can be a potential candidate for Sn-based nanoelectronics and spintronic applications.

Equilibrium molecular dynamics simulation using 2nd generation Reactive Bond Order interatomic potential has been performed to model the thermal transport of nanometer sized zigzag defected graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) containing several types of vacancies. We have investigated the thermal conductivity of defected GNRs as a function of vacancy concentration within a range of 0.5% to 5% and temperature ranging from 300K to 600K, along with a comparative analysis of those for pristine GNRs. We find that, a vacancy concentration of 0.5% leads to over 90% reduction in the thermal conductivity of GNRs. At low defect concentration, the decay rate is faster but ceases gradually at higher defect concentration. With the increasing temperature, thermal conductivity of defected GNRs decreases but shows less variation in comparison with that of pristine GNRs at higher temperatures. Such comprehensive study on several vacancy type defects in GNRs can provide further insight to tune up the thermal transport characteristics of low dimensional carbon nanostructures. This eventually would encourage the characterization of more stable thermal properties in thermal devices at an elevated temperature as well as the potential applicability of GNRs as thermoelectrics.

The thermal conductivity of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) has been investigated using equilibrium molecular dynamics (EMD) simulation based on Green-Kubo (GK) method to compare two interatomic potentials namely optimized Tersoff and 2nd generation Reactive Empirical Bond Order (REBO). Our comparative study includes the estimation of thermal conductivity as a function of temperature, length and width of GNR for both the potentials. The thermal conductivity of graphene nanoribbon decreases with the increase of temperature. Quantum correction has been introduced for thermal conductivity as a function of temperature to include quantum effect below Debye temperature. Our results show that for temperatures up to Debye temperature, thermal conductivity increases, attains its peak and then falls off monotonically. Thermal conductivity is found to decrease with the increasing length for optimized Tersoff potential. However, thermal conductivity has been reported to increase with length using 2nd generation REBO potential for the GNRs of same size. Thermal conductivity, for the specified range of width, demonstrates an increasing trend with the increase of width for both the concerned potentials. In comparison with 2nd generation REBO potential, optimized Tersoff potential demonstrates a better modeling of thermal Electronics 2015, 4 1110 conductivity as well as provides a more appropriate description of phonon thermal transport in graphene nanoribbon. Such comparative study would provide a good insight for the optimization of the thermal conductivity of graphene nanoribbons under diverse conditions.