Polaron effects on the thermal conductivity of zigzag carbon nanotubes

Thermal conductivity of metallic zigzag carbon nanotube is investigated in the context of Holstein model. Green's function approach is implemented to calculate the electronic contribution of thermal conductivity as a function of radius of carbon nanotube, temperature and electron phonon coupling strength. Our results show that electronic thermal conductivity increases as a function of temperature at low temperature and gets a maximum value then decays at high temperature. Also the effect of radius of both metallic and semiconductor zigzag carbon nanotube on the thermal conductivity is studied. Our results show thermal conductivity increases when CNT diameter increases and decreases with electron phonon interaction strength. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.