Interlayer shear of nanomaterials: Graphene–graphene, boron nitride–boron nitride and graphene–boron nitride

In this paper, the interlayer sliding between graphene and boron nitride (h-BN) is studied by molecular dynamics simulations. The interlayer shear force between h-BN/h-BN is found to be six times higher than that of graphene/graphene, while the interlayer shear between graphene/h-BN is approximate to that of graphene/graphene. The graphene/h-BN heterostructure shows several anomalous interlayer shear characteristics compared to its bilayer counterparts. For graphene/graphene and h-BN/h-BN, interlayer shears only exit along the sliding direction while interlayer shear for graphene/h-BN is observed along both the translocation and perpendicular directions. Our results provide significant insight into the interlayer shear characteristics of 2D nanomaterials.