We investigate the role that nonlinearity in the interatomic potential has on the thermal conductance of a suspended nanoribbon when it is subjected to a longitudinal strain. To focus on the first cubic and quartic nonlinear terms of a general potential, we propose an atomic system based on an α-β Fermi-Pasta-Ulam nearest neighbor interaction. We perform classical molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the contribution of longitudinal, transversal and flexural modes to the thermal conductance as a function of the α-β parameters and the applied strain. We compare the cases where atoms are allowed to vibrate only {\it in} plane (2D) with the case of vibrations {\it in} and {\it out} of plane (3D). We find that the dependence of conductance on α and β relies on a crossover phenomenon between linear/nonlinear delocalized/localized flexural and transversal modes, driven by an on/off switch of the strain.
@article{arxiv.1707.00170,
title = {Thermal conductance of suspended nanoribbons: interplay between strain and interatomic potential nonlinearity},
author = {Roberto Barreto and M. Florencia Carusela and Alejandro Monastra},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.00170},
year = {2017}
}