Nonlinear thermal conductance in single-wall carbon nanotubes: negative differential thermal resistance

Nonlinear thermal conductance in single-wall carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is investigated by applying the large temperature difference. From the classical molecular dynamics simulations, we observe the occurrence of negative differential thermal resistance (NDTR) in CNTs, namely, there exist a region of temperature difference, where the heat flux decreases as the applied temperature difference increases. Double NDTRs even occur in some CNTs with special diameters. When the length of CNTs increases, NDTR regime reduces and vanishes in the thermodynamic limit. CNTs with NDTR may be the good candidate materials for designing thermal devices such as thermal transistors, thermal logic gates, and thermal memory.