  In this work, we investigated the effect of knots in the thermal transport of
graphene nanoribbons through non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. We
considered the cases of one, two, and three knots are present. Temperature
jumps appear in the temperature profile where the knots are located, which
indicates that they introduce thermal resistances in the system, similar to
interfacial Kapitza resistance present between two different materials and/or
single materials with defects and/or lattice distortions. We found that the
thermal resistance introduced by each individual knot is essentially the same
as the overall resistance increase linearly with the number of knots, as they
behave as thermal resistances associated in series. Also, the relative position
between each knot in the arrangement does not strongly affect the thermal
current produced by the temperature gradient, showing a weak thermal
rectification effect.
