Enhancement of fracture toughness of graphene via crack bridging with stone-thrower-wales defects

G Rajasekaran and A Parashar, DIAMOND AND RELATED MATERIALS, 74, 90-99 (2017).

DOI: 10.1016/j.diamond.2017.02.015

Ever increasing applications of graphene motivates researchers to synthesize large scale graphene sheetS. In general, large scale graphene sheets are synthesized with some inherent topological defects such as vacancies, Stone Thrower Wales (STW) and grain boundaries. In this article, effect of STW defects on the fracture toughness of graphene was studied with the help of molecular dynamics based simulations. In this numerical study, different atomistic configurations of graphene containing a centrally embedded crack with or without STW defects were modelled. It can be predicted from the simulations that STW defects could be used for tailoring the fracture toughness as well as fracture behaviour of graphene. Significant improvement in the fracture toughness of graphene has been observed while applying load in zig-zag direction with STW defects were positioned next to the crack faces. Interaction of stress fields generated from crack tip as well as from STW defects helps in tailoring the fracture behaviour of graphene. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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