Nanoscrolls are papyrus-like nanostructures which present unique properties due to their open ended morphology. These properties can be exploited in a plethora of technological applications, leading to the design of novel and interesting devices. Dur
ing the past decade, significant advances in the synthesis and characterization of these structures have been made, but many challenges still remain. In this mini review we provide an overview on their history, experimental synthesis methods, basic properties and application perspectives.
As graphene became one of the most important materials today, there is a renewed interest on others similar structures. One example is silicene, the silicon analogue of graphene. It share some the remarkable graphene properties, such as the Dirac con
e, but presents some distinct ones, such as a pronounced structural buckling. We have investigated, through density functional based tight-binding (DFTB), as well as reactive molecular dynamics (using ReaxFF), the mechanical properties of suspended single-layer silicene. We calculated the elastic constants, analyzed the fracture patterns and edge reconstructions. We also addressed the stress distributions, unbuckling mechanisms and the fracture dependence on the temperature. We analysed the differences due to distinct edge morphologies, namely zigzag and armchair.
Recently, it was proposed based on classical elasticity theory and experiments at macroscale, that the conformations of sheets inside cylindrical tubes present a universal behavior. A natural question is whether this behavior still holds at nanoscale
. Based on molecular dynamics simulations and analytical modeling for graphene and boron nitride membranes confined inside carbon nanotubes, we show that the class of universality observed at macroscale is violated at nanoscale. The precise origins of these discrepancies is addressed and proven to be related to both surface and atomistic effects.
