Dependence of thermal conductivity of graphene on the coefficient of linear expansion and temperature

Graphene attracts particular interest recently due to its extraordinary properties. Xu et al. have studied length-dependent thermal conductivity in suspended single-layer graphene. They observed that the thermal conductivity of graphene increases and remains logarithmic divergence with sample length. Yoon et al. observed that the coefficient of linear expansion (α) for graphene is always negative between at least up to 2500 K. In this paper, we study the dependence of thermal conductivity of graphene on the coefficient of linear expansion (CLE). We find that the thermal conductivity of graphene bears an exponential relationship with its CLE and is directly proportional to the sample length. Using the Slack equation, we have also found that the thermal conductivity of graphene is inversely proportional to the temperature and verified the relationship between the thermal conductivity of graphene and CLE. Due to this property graphene can be utilized to remove fish plates in railroads which can increase the efficiency of railway tracks.