Elastic models for graphene sheets and membrane materials

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The past decade has seen exciting progress of science and technology in small scale membrane materials including atom-thick graphene sheets, biomembranes, and soft electronic membranes. The progress has stimulated a resurge of research on mechanics of atom-thick monolayers and nanoscale membrane materials. Although traditional solid mechanics models (such as elastic plate or membrane models) have been widely applied to study mechanical problems of small-scale membrane materials, they cannot capture some complex mechanics phenomena of monolayers or nanoscale membranes associated with new features of forces and microstructures at small scales. This has raised a major challenge to the solid mechanics community. Mechanical behaviors of monolayers or nanoscale membrane materials are characterized particularly by a few new features : 1) extremely low bending rigidity of monolayers such as graphene sheets; 2) self-attractive intermolecular or surface forces between different parts of the material; 3) multilayer structure such as multilayer graphene sheets or biomembranes. Inspired by the applicant’s recent work on singlelayer graphene sheets and carbon nanotubes, biomembrane shells (viruses, microtubules) and surface and intermolecular forces, the present proposal aims to develop new elastic models for mechanical behavior of atom-thick graphene sheets and membrane materials at the nano/micro scales, and contribute to the training of a new generation of engineers of Canada in small-scale mechanical engineering, and to meet the anticipated needs of Canada in the near future.