The specific heat of carbon nanotube networks and their potential applications

Using the carbon nanotube (CNT) as the 1D building block, various 2D covalent CNT networks are theoretically built. The specific heat of these CNT networks is calculated by the quantized molecular structural mechanics method. The effect of the geometric parameters of networks on their specific heat is found to be small at all temperature levels. At high temperatures this effect even vanishes. A general formula for the specific heat of these 2D CNT networks is given. This formula depends only on the building block of the networks. Besides, the specific heat per unit area of these CNT networks with different geometric properties are also explored and found to be extremely low. The predicted thermal properties of the CNT networks reveal their potential applications in fabricating excellent loudspeakers.