The Impacts of Random Distributed Vacancy Defects in Steady-State Thermal Conduction of Graphene

The unavoidable vacancy defects dispersed throughout the entire pristine graphene tailor to the integrity of the lattice structure and thereby have complicated impacts on the mechanical and thermal properties of graphene. In order to analyze the influence of vacancy defects on the extraordinary thermal conductivity of graphene, three typical kinds of vacancy defects—namely center concentrated, periodic, and random distributed vacancy defects—are compared and discussed. In the steady-state thermal conduction, the finite element method (FEM) is performed to calculate the total thermal energy and temperature field. The equivalent coefficient of thermal conductivity is derived from thermal energy, amount of vacancy defects, and boundary condition. The chirality in graphene is discussed by the location of its heat source. Moreover, the Monte Carlo simulation is applied to propagate the uncertainty of random vacancy defects in the finite element model of pristine graphene. In this paper, we provide the robustness to defend the impacts of vacancy defects on thermal conduction and the fluctuation and divergence caused by a certain number of random vacancy defects.