Carbon nanocone: A promising thermal rectifier

Abstract

With molecular dynamics simulations, we demonstrate very obvious thermal rectification in large temperature range from 200 to 400 K in nanocone. We also observe that the rectification of nanocone does not depend on the length very sensitively, which is in stark contrast with the nanotube thermal rectifier in which the rectification decreases dramatically as the length increases. Our work demonstrates that carbon nanocone is a promising practical phononic device. © 2008 American Institute of Physics.