Carbon nanotubes have extraordinary mechanical, electrical, thermal andoptical properties. They are harder than diamond yet exible, have betterelectrical conductor than copper, but can also be a semiconductor or evenan insulator. These ranges of properties of course make carbon nanotubeshighly interesting for many applications. Carbon nanotubes are already usedin products as hockey sticks and tennis rackets for improving strength and exibility. Soon there are mobile phones with exible screens made fromcarbon nanotubes. Also, car- and airplane bodies will probably be mademuch lighter and stronger, if carbon nanotubes are included in the construction.However, the real game changers are; nanoelectromechanical systems(NEMS) and computer processors based on graphene and carbon nanotubes.In this work, we study Young's modulus in the axial direction of carbonnanotubes. This has been done by performing density functional theorycalculations. The unit cell has been chosen as to accommodate for tubes ofdierent radii. This allows for modelling the eect of bending of the bondsbetween the carbon atoms in the carbon nanotubes of dierent radii. Theresults show that Young's modulus decreases as the radius decreases. Ineect, the Young's modulus declines from 1 to 0.8 TPa. This eect can beunderstood because the bending diminishes the pure sp^2 character of thebonds.These results are important and useful in construction, not only when usingcarbon nanotubes but also when using graphene. Our results point towardsa Young's modulus that is a material constant and, above a certain criticalvalue, only weakly dependent on the radius of the carbon nanotube.Graphene can be seen as a carbon nanotube with innite radius.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-32351 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Fredriksson, Tore |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för hälsa, natur- och teknikvetenskap (from 2013) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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