Mechanical properties of bonded few-layered graphene via uniaxial test: A molecular dynamics simulation study

The mechanical properties of bonded graphene ribbon were evaluated via uniaxial tensile tests by molecular dynamics simulations. For an ideal/pristine few-layered graphene ribbon, the interlayer superlubrication leads to easily relative sliding between neighboring layers. When the layers in the ribbon are sewn by collision with high speed fullerenes from both sides, a new two-dimensional material is fabricated. A part of bonds in the original graphene layers are broken, and new bonds are generated to connect the neighboring layers at the impacted areas. The in-plane mechanical properties, e.g., Young’s modulus, maximal engineering strain (which demonstrates deformability), deformation energy (which illustrates structural stiffness) and the maximal stress (which describes strength), of the newly fabricated defective ribbon are different from the original ideal ribbon. By comparison with the ideal ribbon, the changes of the mechanical properties were demonstrated. Meanwhile, temperature effect on the changes of properties was also discussed for potential application of the new two-dimensional material. In brief, the maximal strain slightly depends on temperature and loading speed. The defective ribbon breaks in tension failure mode when stretched along x/zigzag direction, but in shear failure mode when stretched along y/armchair direction. The Young’s modulus reduces 10%–12%, but, the maximal strain reduces more than 50% when compared with the ideal ribbon.