English

Radial elasticity of multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Materials Science 2015-07-20 v1

Abstract

We report an experimental and a theoretical study of the radial elasticity of multi-walled carbon nanotubes as a function of external radius. We use atomic force microscopy and apply small indentation amplitudes in order to stay in the linear elasticity regime. The number of layers for a given tube radius is inferred from transmission electron microscopy, revealing constant ratios of external to internal radii. This enables a comparison with molecular dynamics results, which also shed some light onto the applicability of Hertz theory in this context. Using this theory, we find a radial Young modulus strongly decreasing with increasing radius and reaching an asymptotic value of 30 +/- 10 GPa.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1201.5501,
  title  = {Radial elasticity of multi-walled carbon nanotubes},
  author = {Ismael Palaci and Stephan Fedrigo and Harald Brune and Christian Klinke and Michael Chen and Elisa Riedo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1201.5501},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures