Effective mechanical properties of multilayer nano-heterostructures

Mukhopadhyay, T., Mahata, A., Adhikari, S. and Asle Zaeem, M. (2017) Effective mechanical properties of multilayer nano-heterostructures. Scientific Reports, 7, 15818. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-15664-3) (PMID:29150623) (PMCID:PMC5693924)

Abstract

Two-dimensional and quasi-two-dimensional materials are important nanostructures because of their exciting electronic, optical, thermal, chemical and mechanical properties. However, a single-layer nanomaterial may not possess a particular property adequately, or multiple desired properties simultaneously. Recently a new trend has emerged to develop nano-heterostructures by assembling multiple monolayers of different nanostructures to achieve various tunable desired properties simultaneously. For example, transition metal dichalcogenides such as MoS2 show promising electronic and piezoelectric properties, but their low mechanical strength is a constraint for practical applications. This barrier can be mitigated by considering graphene-MoS2 heterostructure, as graphene possesses strong mechanical properties. We have developed efficient closed-form expressions for the equivalent elastic properties of such multi-layer hexagonal nano-hetrostructures. Based on these physics-based analytical formulae, mechanical properties are investigated for different heterostructures such as graphene-MoS2, graphene-hBN, graphene-stanene and stanene-MoS2. The proposed formulae will enable efficient characterization of mechanical properties in developing a wide range of application-specific nano-heterostructures.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: T.M. acknowledges the fnancial support from Swansea University through the award of Zienkiewicz Scholarship. S.A. acknowledges the support of the ‘Engineering Nonlinearity’ program grant (EP/K003836/1) funded by the EPSRC. M.A.Z. acknowledges the funding support from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSFCMMI 1537170. Te authors are also grateful for computer time allocation provided by the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) under award number TG-DMR140008.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Adhikari, Professor Sondipon
• Authors: Mukhopadhyay, T., Mahata, A., Adhikari, S., and Asle Zaeem, M.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Infrastructure and Environment
• Journal Name: Scientific Reports
• Publisher: Nature Research
• ISSN: 2045-2322
• ISSN (Online): 2045-2322
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2017 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Scientific Reports 7:15818
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence