Topological Defects at the Graphene/h-BN interface Abnormally Enhance Its Thermal Conductance

Low thermal conductance across interface is often the limiting factor in managing heat in many advanced device applications. The most commonly used approach to enhance the thermal conductance is to reduce/eliminate the interfacial structural defects. Using a graphene/h-BN (Gr/h-BN) interface, we show surprisingly that topological defects are able to enhance the thermal conductance across the interface. It is found that the phonon transmission across the Gr/h-BN interface with 5|7 defects is higher than that of the pristine interface, which is in strong contrast to the common notion that interface defects promote phonon scattering. By analyzing the strain distribution and phonon vibrational spectra, we find that this abnormal enhancement in interfacial thermal conductance originates from the localization of the stress fields arising from misfit dislocations and their out-of-plane deformations at the interface. In the presence of the defects, the overall mismatch strain is reduced. In addition, the out-of-plane deformations screen the long-ranged dislocation strain fields, resulting in the stress fields to be localized only at the cores of the defects. This abnormal mechanism provides a new dimension to enhance the interfacial thermal conductance in two-dimensional heterostructures.