Influence of the Vacancies on the Buckling Behavior of a Single–Layered Graphene Nanosheet

Graphene is a new class of two-dimensional carbon nanostructure, which holds great promise for the vast applications in many technological fields. It would be one of the prominent new materials for the next generation nano-electronic devices. In this paper the influence of various vacancy defects on the critical buckling load of a single-layered graphene nanosheet is investigated. The nanosheet is modeled on the base of structural mechanics approach which covalent bonds between atoms are modeled as equivalent beam elements in a finite element model. The mechanical properties of the nanosheet extracted from the model are in good agreement with those of other research works. Effect of the number of vacancies and their positions on the critical buckling load is investigated in the present work. Our results show that the location of the vacancy has a significant role in the amount of critical buckling load. Furthermore, as the density of the vacancies increases, the value of critical buckling load decreases and the relationship is approximately linear.