LETTER pubs.acs.org/NanoLett Phonon Engineering in Carbon Nanotubes by Controlling Defect Concentration

Continuous miniaturization of electronic devices gives rise toan exponential growth of power densities in integrated circuits.1 The recent advances in processing/manufacturing nanostructured materials provide wider possibilities of control-ling the thermal transport and novel designs for integrating them within the device. In particular, carbon-based nanomaterials such as CNTs in both individual24 and composite forms511 have attracted significant attention as candidates for thermal cooling applications due to their excellent thermal transport properties in addition to their remarkable thermal stability and mechanical strength.12,13 The experimental values for k of individual single-wall andmultiwall CNTs range between 400 and 7000Wm1 K1,1419 and between 300 and 3000Wm1 K1,1824 respectively. The lack of a control mechanism and large variance in kmeasurements hinder the utilization of CNTs in practical thermal management applications and complicate the device design