Elastic Properties of C and BxCyNz Composite Nanotubes

TL;DR

This study compares the elastic properties of carbon and various composite nanotubes, revealing that carbon nanotubes have higher Young's modulus, comparable to defect-free graphene, with results aligning well with experiments.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of the energetic, structural, and elastic properties of carbon and composite nanotubes using a tight-binding approach, highlighting differences in stiffness.

Findings

Carbon nanotubes have higher Young's modulus than composite nanotubes.

Young's modulus of carbon nanotubes is comparable to defect-free graphene.

Results agree well with experimental data.

Abstract

We present a comparative study of the energetic, structural and elastic properties of carbon and composite single-wall nanotubes, including BN, BC3 and BC2N nanotubes, using a non-orthogonal tight-binding formalism. Our calculations predict that carbon nanotubes have a higher Young modulus than any of the studied composite nanotubes, and of the same order as that found for defect-free graphene sheets. We obtain good agreement with the available experimental results.