Thermal transport around tears in graphene

Tears in any material act as barriers to phonon transport. In this study, molecular dynamics simulations are employed to investigate thermal transport around tears in graphene. Specifically, thermal boundary conductance across different tear orientations and lengths is computed. Analysis of vibrational density of states suggests that long-wavelength acoustic phonons within the spectrum range 0–700 cm−1 are vital to thermal transport across the tears. Different phonon scattering phenomena are observed for both tear orientations. It is proposed that the dissimilitude of the scattering processes encountered by phonons carrying energy around the tears to the opposite end explains why thermal transport is generally more efficient for longitudinal tears in our simulations.