Mesoscopic Physics of Phonon Transport in Carbon Materials

Abstract

We give a theoretical review of recent development of the mesoscopic physics of phonon transport in carbon nanotubes, including the quantization of phonon thermal conductance, phonon Anderson localization, and so on. A single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) can be regarded as a typical one-dimensional phonon conductor and exhibits various interesting phenomena originating from its one dimensionality. For example, a pristine SWCNT with- out any defects shows the quantization of phonon thermal conductance at low temperature. On the other hand, a defective SWCNT with randomly distributed carbon isotopes shows the phonon Anderson localization originating from the interference between phonons scattered by isotope impurities.