Image of the week: crumpled graphene

By Jennifer Sanders on March 23, 2015

The response of graphene to applied forces can strongly influence its properties and applicability in novel device physics. Crumpled graphene, created by applying a compressive stress, has great potential for gas storage, electronics and super-capacitors. Thus, studying how graphene responds to, and recovers from, stress and strain can tell us how it will perform in a proposed device or application.

This week’s image illustrates how a collection of bent graphene flakes — building units — respond to compression as described in a recent paper published in JPhysD.

Transformation of a particular building unit of crumpled graphene during hydrostatic compression and uniaxial compression along the x axis, from Julia A Baimova et al 2015 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 48 095302

The authors, who employ molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to a variety of building units, conclude that for small compressive loads, the crumpled graphene does not follow Hooke’s law. In addition, the orientation of the building unit, and the type of compression applied, dictates its elastic limit; the point at which changes become irreversible.

Find out more about the shape evolution of these nuclei and what the figure represents in the full paper published in JPhysD.

Figure: Transformation of a particular building unit of crumpled graphene during hydrostatic compression and uniaxial compression along the x axis, from Julia A Baimova et al 2015 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 48 095302