Effects of Stone-Wales and vacancy defects in fracture behavior of defective graphene

Abstract

Graphene has much higher mechanical strength than other materials, but can be significantly influenced by the vacancy defect or Stone-Wales defect in the lattices. In this paper, we use molecular dynamics simulation to study the effects of vacancy and Stone-Wales defects in fracture behavior of the defective graphene. The results show that the fracture strength of graphene is more sensitive to the vacancy defects than that of Stone-Wales defect. When the defect is located in the center of graphene, the fracture strength of defect graphene is less than that of defect-free graphene. When the defect is far away from the center of graphene, the fracture strength of defect graphene will be enhanced, even greater than that of defect-free graphene. This study may help to understand the properties of graphene with defect, but also show the potential for graphene-based materials in engineering.