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An explicit solution for the vibration of a carbon chain inside carbon nanotubes (CNTs) was obtained using continuum modeling of the van der Waals (vdW) interactions between them. The effect of the initial tensile force and the amplitude of the carbon chain as well as the radii of the CNTs on the vibration frequency were analyzed in detail, respectively. Our analytical results show that the vibration frequency of the carbon chain in a (5,5) CNT could be around two orders of magnitude higher than that of an independent carbon chain without initial tensile force. For a given CNT radius, the vibration frequency nonlinearly increases with increasing amplitude and initial tensile force. The obtained analytical cohesive energy and vibration frequency are reasonable by comparison of present molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. These findings will be a great help towards understanding the vibration property of a nanowire in nanotubes, and designing nanoelectromechanical devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vertically aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays are promising candidates for advanced thermal interface materials (TIMs) since they possess high mechanical compliance and high intrinsic thermal conductivity. Some of the previous works indicate that the CNT arrays in direct dry contact with the target surface possess low contact thermal conductance, which is the dominant thermal resistance. Using a phase sensitive transient thermo-reflectance (PSTTR) technique, we measure the thermal conductance between CNT arrays and copper (Cu) surfaces under different pressures. The experiments demonstrated that the contact force is one of the crucial factors for optimizing the thermal performance of CNT array-based TIMs. The experimental results suggest that the Cu-CNT arrays' contact thermal conductance has a strong dependence on the surface deformation and has an order of magnitude rise as the contact pressure increases from 0.05 to 0.15 MPa. However, further increase of the contact pressure beyond 0.15 MPa has little effect on the contact thermal resistance. This work could provide guidelines to determine the minimum requirement of packaging pressure on CNT TIMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]