Our latest publication “Length and torsion dependence of thermal conductivity in twisted graphene nanoribbons” has just been accepted for publication in Physical Review Materials.
In this work we investigate the dependence of the thermal conductivity (TC) of twisted graphene nanoribbons (TGNRs) on the number of applied turns to the GNR by calculating more precise and mathematically well defined geometric parameters related to the TGNR shape, namely, its twist and writhe. We show that the dependence of the TC on twist is not a simple function of the number of turns initially applied to a straight GNR. In fact, we show that the TC of TGNRs requires at least two parameters to be properly described. Our conclusions are supported by atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to obtain the TC of suspended TGNRs prepared under different values of initially applied turns and different sizes of their suspended part. Among possible choices of parameter pairs, we show that TC can be appropriately described by the initial number of turns and the initial twist density of the TGNRs.
The work is a collaboration with Alexandre Fonseca at UNICAMP.