Our first paper of 2014 “Length-dependent thermal conductivity in suspended single-layer graphene” has just been published in Nature Communications.
Graphene exhibits extraordinary electronic and mechanical properties, and extremely high thermal conductivity. Being a very stable atomically thick membrane that can be suspended between two leads, graphene provides a perfect test platform for studying thermal transport in two-dimensional systems. In this work we report experimental measurements and non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of thermal conduction in suspended single-layer graphene as a function of both temperature and sample length. Interestingly and in contrast to bulk materials, at 300 K,the thermal conductivity keeps increasing and remains logarithmically divergent with sample length even for sample lengths much larger than the average phonon mean free path. This result is a consequence of the two-dimensional nature of phonons in graphene, and provides fundamental understanding of thermal transport in two-dimensional materials.
The work presented in this manuscript was carried out during my period as Postdoctoral Fellow in the group of Davide Donadio at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Polymerforschung in Mainz, in collaboration with colleagues at the Graphene Research Center in the National University of Singapore.
The paper is available here (open access).
Update: Our work has been covered by the media worldwide:
New research shows unlimited heat conduction in graphene – Nanowerk
Physicists show unlimited heat conduction in graphene – R&D
Je länger, desto wärmer – pro-physik.de
Physicists have demonstrated unlimited heat conduction in graphene – Science Alert – Australia & New Zealand
Physicists show unlimited heat conduction in graphene – Phys.org
Le graphène viole la loi de conduction de la chaleur de Fourier – Futura-Sciences
Graphene Could Absorb an Unlimited Amount of Heat – Gizmodo.
Update 2: We have also been featured in the bulletin of the Brazilian Physical Society.