Carbon honeycomb structure with high axial thermal transport and strong robustness

Thermal transport properties of low-dimensional nanomaterials are highly anisotropic and sensitive to the structural disorder, which can greatly limit their applications in heat dissipation. In this work, we unveil that the carbon honeycomb structures which have high in-plane thermal conductivity simultaneously possess high axial thermal conductivity. Based on non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, we find that the intrinsic axial thermal conductivity of carbon honeycomb structure reaches 746 W·m −1 ·K −1 at room temperature, comparable to that of good heat dissipation materials such as hexagonal boron nitride. By comparing the phonon transmission spectrum between carbon honeycombs and few layer graphene, the physical mechanism responsible for the high axial thermal conductivity of carbon honeycombs is discussed. More importantly, our simulation results further demonstrate that the high axial thermal conductivity of carbon honeycomb structure is robust to the structural disorder, which is a common issue during the mass production of the carbon honeycomb structure. Our study suggests that the carbon honeycomb structure has unique advantages to serve as the thermal management material for practical applications. Graphical abstract