Thermal boundary conductance between multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Interfacial thermal transport of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) is investigated by using bulk pellet specimens. Steady-state conduction method gives thermal conductivity of 1 to 4 W/mK for the pellets with mass density from 0.2 to 0.35 g/cm³. This low thermal conductivity is due to the thermal boundary conductance between the nanotubes. Computational analysis is conducted for the pellet modeled as a random network of spherocylinders (SCs) and calculated dependency of thermal conductivity on pellet density shows good agreement with experimental data when we treat non-uniform SCs. By comparing the experimental and computational results, the thermal boundary conductance between two MWNTs can be taken as 1.5×10^-8 W/K. This result agrees well with the reported data obtained by individual measurement, which suggests this simple method is applicable to probe the interfacial thermal phenomena of nanomaterials. An improved scaling law, k ∝ ρ^2.14, for thermal conductivity of MWNTs aggregations is also proposed and discussed.