ABSTRACT
Graphene (GE) and GE-based nanostructures have attracted intensive interest in the past decades owing to their superior properties and prospective applications in nanodevices. Recently, there is an increasing demand for understanding the thermal properties of GE and GE-based nanostructures. This demand is driven by the fact that thermal dissipation at the nanoscale has become a crucial issue because of the ever-continuing miniaturization of nanodevices. Additionally, thermal transport at the nanoscale has revealed many unique phenomena, of which understanding would lead to novel nanotechnologies in thermal management. Most of these unique phenomena are related to an important characteristic of nanomaterials: their properties highly depend on their atomic structures, which are often inevitably altered by chemical functionalization, strain, and presence of structural interruptions created during their fabrication or application processes. This chapter is devoted to discussing the thermal properties of GE and GE-based nanostructures and understanding the structural alteration effects through the method of nonequilibrium molecular-dynamics simulation. Details of the simulation methodologies are also highlighted.
