Energy approach to the unstressed geometry of single-walled carbon nanotubes

[EN] In this paper, the geometry of single-walled carbon nanotubes without any external loading is analyzed via an energy procedure. The nanotube is assumed to be inscribed into a perfect cylinder of unknown diameter, which is estimated by minimizing the total interatomic potential involved into a b...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: MERLI GISBERT, RAFAEL|||0000-0003-1987-4683, Monleón Cremades, Salvador|||0000-0002-5726-749X, Lazaro, Carlos|||0000-0001-7255-7068
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Repositorio:RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/108048
Acceso en línea:https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/108048
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Carbon nanotubes
Molecular mechanics
Energy minimization
Prestressed state
MECANICA DE LOS MEDIOS CONTINUOS Y TEORIA DE ESTRUCTURAS
INGENIERIA MECANICA
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] In this paper, the geometry of single-walled carbon nanotubes without any external loading is analyzed via an energy procedure. The nanotube is assumed to be inscribed into a perfect cylinder of unknown diameter, which is estimated by minimizing the total interatomic potential involved into a basic cell with several carbon atoms and their corresponding bonds. In this step, two interatomic potentials have been adopted in order to compare their influence on the obtained results. Our calculations show that the widely used conformal mapping is not the most suitable option to reproduce the geometry of single-walled nanotubes in absence of external loading. Likewise, a more accurate method to estimate the initial diameter of the nanotube is developed, yielding higher differences with smaller nanotubes in comparison with other published works. The present analysis can be useful in the framework of molecular mechanics or continuum models as an alternative way to introduce initial stresses (due to the curvature of the cylinder) in the mechanical analysis, against other involved methods.