Basal-plane heat transport in three-dimensional graphite ribbons

Graphitic materials are widely used in thermal management owing to the high basal-plane thermal conductivity. However, the modeling and physics of basal-plane heat transport along finite-sized graphite ribbons remain to be fully established. In this work, we present a computational approach by directly solving the phonon Boltzmann transport equation in both three-dimensional real space and reciprocal space with first-principles input of phonon properties. Our theoretical model predicts the thickness- and temperature-dependent thermal conductivities of both multilayer and thin graphite ribbons in good agreement with a broad range of experiments when carefully considering the effects of finite length, width and thickness as well as the sample conditions. The observation of phonon Poiseuille flow is also shown to be very sensitive to the surface roughness of graphite ribbons, which have to be sufficiently smooth in the thickness direction. This work thus provides an efficient modeling framework for future theoretical and experimental investigations of hydrodynamic heat transport in graphitic structures.