Effect of extended line defects on thermal conduction of carbon nanotubes: analyzing phonon structures by band...

We theoretically investigate the effect of extended line defects (ELDs) on thermal transport properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) using nonequilibrium Green's function method. Our study shows that the thermal conductance of CNTs with ELDs can be 25% lower than that of pristine CNTs. By extending the application of the recently developed unfolding method for electronic structures to phonon spectra, we find that the unfolded phonon bands of defected CNTs are split with obvious gap opening, leading to lower phonon transmissions. Further phonon local density of states analysis reveals that the change of bonding configuration near the ELD in defected CNTs can tail the degree of phonon localization. Our results indicate that introducing ELDs might be an efficient way to control thermal conduction of CNTs. The extended unfolding method for phonon systems, found to be efficient in this work, is expected to be applicable to other systems with densely folded phonon bands.