Jeffrey T. Paci

Theoretical and experimental studies of the reactions between hyperthermal O(3P) and graphite: graphene-based direct dynamics and beam-surface scattering approaches.

Beam-surface scattering experiments and theoretical direct dynamics based on density functional theory calculations are used to investigate hyperthermal collisions between O((3)P) and highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG). The simulations suggest that the HOPG surface becomes functionalized with epoxide groups. Intersystem crossing (ISC) between the lowest-energy triplet and singlet potential-energy surfaces is not necessary for this functionalization to occur. Both theory and experiment indicate that incoming O atoms can react at the surface to form O(2) by way of an Eley-Rideal mechanism. They also suggest that the collisions can result in the production of CO and CO(2) by way of both direct and complex reaction mechanisms. The direct dynamics simulations provide significant insight into the details of the complex reaction mechanisms. Semiquinones are present at defect sites and can form in functionalized pristine sheets, the latter resulting in the formation of a defect. Direct collision of an incoming O atom with a semiquinone or vibrational excitation caused by a nearby O-atom collision can cause the release of the semiquinone CO, forming carbon monoxide. The CO may react with an oxygen atom on the surface to become CO(2) before receding from the surface. The simulations also illustrate how epoxide groups neighboring semiquinones catalyze the release of CO. Throughout, the experimental results are observed to be consistent with the theoretical calculations.

Experimental-Computational Study of Shear Interactions within Double-Walled Carbon Nanotube Bundles

The mechanical behavior of carbon nanotube (CNT)-based fibers and nanocomposites depends intimately on the shear interactions between adjacent tubes. We have applied an experimental-computational approach to investigate the shear interactions between adjacent CNTs within individual double-walled nanotube (DWNT) bundles. The force required to pull out an inner bundle of DWNTs from an outer shell of DWNTs was measured using in situ scanning electron microscopy methods. The normalized force per CNT-CNT interaction (1.7 ± 1.0 nN) was found to be considerably higher than molecular mechanics (MM)-based predictions for bare CNTs (0.3 nN). This MM result is similar to the force that results from exposure of newly formed CNT surfaces, indicating that the observed pullout force arises from factors beyond what arise from potential energy effects associated with bare CNTs. Through further theoretical considerations we show that the experimentally measured pullout force may include small contributions from carbonyl functional groups terminating the free ends of the CNTs, corrugation of the CNT-CNT interactions, and polygonization of the nanotubes due to their mutual interactions. In addition, surface functional groups, such as hydroxyl groups, that may exist between the nanotubes are found to play an unimportant role. All of these potential energy effects account for less than half of the ~1.7 nN force. However, partially pulled-out inner bundles are found not to pull back into the outer shell after the outer shell is broken, suggesting that dissipation is responsible for more than half of the pullout force. The sum of force contributions from potential energy and dissipation effects are found to agree with the experimental pullout force within the experimental error.

Plasticity and ductility in graphene oxide through a mechanochemically induced damage tolerance mechanism

The ability to bias chemical reaction pathways is a fundamental goal for chemists and material scientists to produce innovative materials. Recently, two-dimensional materials have emerged as potential platforms for exploring novel mechanically activated chemical reactions. Here we report a mechanochemical phenomenon in graphene oxide membranes, covalent epoxide-to-ether functional group transformations that deviate from epoxide ring-opening reactions, discovered through nanomechanical experiments and density functional-based tight binding calculations. These mechanochemical transformations in a two-dimensional system are directionally dependent, and confer pronounced plasticity and damage tolerance to graphene oxide monolayers. Additional experiments on chemically modified graphene oxide membranes, with ring-opened epoxide groups, verify this unique deformation mechanism. These studies establish graphene oxide as a two-dimensional building block with highly tuneable mechanical properties for the design of high-performance nanocomposites, and stimulate the discovery of new bond-selective chemical transformations in two-dimensional materials.

Large-scale density functional theory investigation of failure modes in ZnO nanowires.

Electromechanical and photonic properties of semiconducting nanowires depend on their strain states and are limited by their extent of deformation. A fundamental understanding of the mechanical response of individual nanowires is therefore essential to assess system reliability and to define the design space of future nanowire-based devices. Here we perform a large-scale density functional theory (DFT) investigation of failure modes in zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires. Nanowires as large as 3.6 nm in diameter with 864 atoms were investigated. The study reveals that pristine nanowires can be elastically deformed to strains as high as 20%, prior to a phase transition leading to fracture. The current study suggests that the phase transition predicted at approximately 10% strain in pristine nanowires by the Buckingham pairwise potential (BP) is an artifact of approximations inherent in the BP. Instead, DFT-based energy barrier calculations suggest that defects may trigger heterogeneous phase transition leading to failure. Thus, the difference previously reported between in situ electron microscopy tensile experiments (brittle fracture) and atomistic simulations (phase transition and secondary loading) (Agrawal, R.; Peng, B.; Espinosa, H. D. Nano Lett. 2009, 9 (12), 4177-2183) is elucidated.

Engineering the Mechanical Properties of Monolayer Graphene Oxide at the Atomic Level

The mechanical properties of graphene oxide (GO) are of great importance for applications in materials engineering. Previous mechanochemical studies of GO typically focused on the influence of the degree of oxidation on the mechanical behavior. In this study, using density functional-based tight binding simulations, validated using density functional theory simulations, we reveal that the deformation and failure of GO are strongly dependent on the relative concentrations of epoxide (-O-) and hydroxyl (-OH) functional groups. Hydroxyl groups cause GO to behave as a brittle material; by contrast, epoxide groups enhance material ductility through a mechanically driven epoxide-to-ether functional group transformation. Moreover, with increasing epoxide group concentration, the strain to failure and toughness of GO significantly increases without sacrificing material strength and stiffness. These findings demonstrate that GO should be treated as a versatile, tunable material that may be engineered by controlling chemical composition, rather than as a single, archetypical material.

In situ scanning electron microscope peeling to quantify surface energy between multiwalled carbon nanotubes and graphene.

Understanding atomic interactions between constituents is critical to the design of high-performance nanocomposites. Here, we report an experimental-computational approach to investigate the adhesion energy between as-produced arc discharge multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and graphene. An in situ scanning electron microscope (SEM) experiment is used to peel MWCNTs from graphene grown on copper foils. The force during peeling is obtained by monitoring the deflection of a cantilever. Finite element and molecular mechanics simulations are performed to assist the data analysis and interpretation of the results. A finite element analysis of the experimental configuration is employed to confirm the applicability of Kendalls peeling model to obtain the adhesion energy. Molecular mechanics simulations are used to estimate the effective contact width at the MWCNT-graphene interface. The measured surface energy is γ = 0.20 ± 0.09 J·m(-2) or γ = 0.36 ± 0.16 J·m(-2), depending on the assumed conformation of the tube cross section during peeling. The scatter in the data is believed to result from an amorphous carbon coating on the MWCNTs, observed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and the surface roughness of graphene as characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM).

Shear and friction between carbon nanotubes in bundles and yarns.

We perform a detailed density functional theory assessment of the factors that determine shear interactions between carbon nanotubes (CNTs) within bundles and in related CNT and graphene structures including yarns, providing an explanation for the shear force measured in recent experiments (Filleter, T. etal. Nano Lett. 2012, 12, 73). The potential energy barriers separating AB stacked structures are found to be irrelevant to the shear analysis for bundles and yarns due to turbostratic stacking, and as a result, the tube-tube shear strength for pristine CNTs is estimated to be <0.24 MPa, that is, extremely small. Instead, it is pinning due to the presence of defects and functional groups at the tube ends that primarily cause resistance to shear when bundles are fractured in weak vacuum (∼10(-5) Torr). Such defects and groups are estimated to involve 0.55 eV interaction energies on average, which is much larger than single-atom vacancy defects (approximately 0.039 eV). Furthermore, because graphitic materials are stiff they have large coherence lengths, and this means that push-pull effects result in force cancellation for vacancy and other defects that are internal to the CNTs. Another important factor is the softness of cantilever structures relative to the stiff CNTs in the experiments, as this contributes to elastic instability transitions that account for significant dissipation during shear that has been observed. The application of these results to the mechanical behavior of yarns is discussed, providing general guidelines for the manufacture of strong yarns composed of CNTs.

Molecular-Level Engineering of Adhesion in Carbon Nanomaterial Interfaces

Weak interfilament van der Waals interactions are potentially a significant roadblock in the development of carbon nanotube- (CNT-) and graphene-based nanocomposites. Chemical functionalization is envisioned as a means of introducing stronger intermolecular interactions at nanoscale interfaces, which in turn could enhance composite strength. This paper reports measurements of the adhesive energy of CNT-graphite interfaces functionalized with various coverages of arylpropionic acid. Peeling experiments conducted in situ in a scanning electron microscope show significantly larger adhesive energies compared to previously obtained measurements for unfunctionalized surfaces (Roenbeck et al. ACS Nano 2014, 8 (1), 124-138). Surprisingly, however, the adhesive energies are significantly higher when both surfaces have intermediate coverages than when one surface is densely functionalized. Atomistic simulations reveal a novel functional group interdiffusion mechanism, which arises for intermediate coverages in the presence of water. This interdiffusion is not observed when one surface is densely functionalized, resulting in energy trends that correlate with those observed in experiments. This unique intermolecular interaction mechanism, revealed through the integrated experimental-computational approach presented here, provides significant insights for use in the development of next-generation nanocomposites.

Hyperthermal O-Atom Exchange Reaction O2 + CO2 through a CO4 Intermediate

O(2) and CO(2) do not react under ordinary conditions because of the thermodynamic stability of CO(2) and the large activation energy required for multiple double-bond cleavage. We present evidence for a gas-phase O-atom exchange reaction between neutral O(2) and CO(2) at elevated collision energies (approximately 160 kcal mol(-1)) from crossed-molecular-beam experiments. CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pVTZ calculations demonstrate that isotope exchange can occur on the ground triplet potential energy surface through a short-lived CO(4) intermediate that isomerizes via a symmetric CO(4) transition state containing a bridging oxygen atom. We propose a plausible adiabatic mechanism for this reaction supported by additional spin-density calculations.

Two quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical coupling schemes appropriate for fracture mechanics studies

Many coupled quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) methods employ disjoint sub domains for the MM and QM regions together with link atoms to ameliorate the effects of severing covalent bonds that straddle the QM/MM interface. In the context of simulations of mechanical properties, this can be problematic because the interactions bet ween the subdomains are then modeled by bonds involving link atoms and such bonds typically do not closely resemble those of the original system. In this paper we consider two coupling schemes that employ overlapping domains. The first is the ONIOM schem e of Morokuma et al. that includes an MM treatment of the entire system together with QM corrections for key subdomains. The second is a new approach that we will refer to as the overlapping domain link atom (ODLA) method. This method involves only a min imal overlap between the QM and MM subdomains. One important advantage of the ODLA scheme as compared to the ONIOM method is that, within the region that is treated entirely by QM methods, chemical interactions can be modeled for which reliable MM potenti als are unavailable. Results of fracture studies of defected graphene sheets obtained with the ONIOM and ODLA methods are compared to benchmark results obtained by an entirely QM treatment. Both coupling methods perform well and the two coupling methods display very close agreement.