Flexural phonons and thermal transport in graphene

We show through an exact numerical solution of the phonon Boltzmann equation that the lattice thermal conductivity of graphene is dominated by contributions from the out-of-plane or flexural phonon modes, previously thought to be negligible. We connect this unexpected result to the anomalously large density of states of flexural phonons compared to their in-plane counterparts and to a symmetry-based selection rule that significantly restricts anharmonic phonon-phonon scattering of the flexural modes. The result is found to hold in the presence of the ripples known to occur in graphene, phonon-isotopic impurity scattering, and rigidity of the flexural phonon branch arising from the long-wavelength coupling…

• NS
  National Science Foundation