Thermal conductivity of sawtooth-like graphene nanoribbons: A molecular dynamics study

In this work, we have employed the classical non-equilibrium molecular dynamics method to investigate the thermal conductivity of sawtooth-like graphene nanoribbons (SGNRs). It is found that the thermal conductivity of SGNRs is much smaller than that of straight armchair-GNRs. When the length of SGNRs is fixed, the thermal conductivity of SGNRs is very sensitive to n (length of the segmented graphene nanoribbons (GNRs)). Our results indicate that the thermal conductivity of SGNRs reduces remarkably at first and then increases with n increasing. The length and width dependence of thermal conductivity for SGNRs is further explored. Interestingly, we find the thermal conductivity of SGNRs is nearly independent on the length, while it is more sensitive to the width. Our results provide a better understanding for GNR and GNR based nanostructures in thermal management. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4768445]