Composition-dependent buckling behaviour of hybrid boron nitride-carbon nanotubes

J Zhang and SA Meguid, PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY CHEMICAL PHYSICS, 17, 12796-12803 (2015).

DOI: 10.1039/c5cp00914f

The buckling of hybrid boron nitride-carbon nanotubes (BN-CNTs) with various BN compositions and locations of the BN domain is investigated using molecular dynamics. We find that BN-CNTs with large BN composition (>38%) only undergo local shell-like buckling in their BN domain. Although similar local shell-like buckling can occur in BN-CNTs with a relatively small BN composition, it can transfer to the global column- like buckling of the whole BN-CNT with increasing strains. The critical strains for local shell-like and global column-like buckling decrease with increasing BN composition. In addition, critical strains and buckling modes of the global column-like buckling of BN-CNTs also strongly depend on the location of their BN domain. As a possible application of the buckling of BN-CNTs, we demonstrate that the BN-CNT can serve as a water channel integrated with a local natural valve using the local buckling of its BN domain.

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