Measurements of the Intrinsic Thermal Conductivity of Individual Multi-Wall Carbon Nanotubes

Thermal transport through carbon nanotubes (CNTs) attracted a lot of attention over the past decade. Several experimental studies have been carried out to determine the thermal conductivities of CNTs [1–3]. However, the measurements are based on an individual CNT sample between two suspended membranes and the results actually include both the intrinsic thermal resistance of the CNT and the contact thermal resistance between the CNT and the two suspended membranes that serve as a heat source and a heat sink. Hence, the effective thermal conductivity extracted from these measurements should be lower than the intrinsic thermal conductivities of the CNTs measured. To minimize the contact thermal resistance, electron beam induce deposition (EBID) of different metals has been used to increase the contact area between the CNT and the heat source and sink [3,4]. However, it is still not clear how effective this treatment is and to what level the effective thermal conductivity obtained after the EBID treatment reflects the intrinsic one.