Thermal property tuning in aligned carbon nanotube films and random entangled carbon nanotube films by ion irradiation Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Ion irradiation effects on thermal property changes are compared between aligned carbon nanotube (A-CNT) films and randomly entangled carbon nanotube (R-CNT) films. After H, C, and Fe ion irradiation, a focusing ion beam with sub-mm diameter is used as a heating source, and an infrared signal is recorded to extract thermal conductivity. Ion irradiation decreases thermal conductivity of A-CNT films, but increases that of R-CNT films. We explain the opposite trends by the fact that neighboring CNT bundles are loosely bonded in A-CNT films, which makes it difficult to create inter-tube linkage/bonding upon ion irradiation. In a comparison, in R-CNT films, which have dense tube networking, carbon displacements are easily trapped between touching tubes and act as inter-tube linkage to promote off-axial phonon transport. The enhancement overcomes the phonon transport loss due to phonon-defect scattering along the axial direction. A model is established to explain the dependence of thermal conductivity changes on ion irradiation parameters including ion species, energies, and current.

published proceedings

  • APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS

author list (cited authors)

  • Wang, J., Chen, D. i., Bykova, J. S., Zakhidov, A. A., Wang, X., & Shao, L.

citation count

  • 2

complete list of authors

  • Wang, Jing||Chen, Di||Bykova, Julia S||Zakhidov, Anvar A||Wang, Xuemei||Shao, Lin

publication date

  • October 2015