Mechanical Properties of Graphene Oxide Coupled by Multi-Physical Field: Grain Boundaries and Functional Groups

Graphene and graphene oxide (GO) usually have grain boundaries (GBs) in the process of synthesis and preparation. Here, we “attach” GBs into GO, a new molecular configuration i.e., polycrystalline graphene oxide (PGO) is proposed. This paper aims to provide an insight into the stability and mechanical properties of PGO by using the molecular dynamics method. For this purpose, the “bottom-up” multi-structure-spatial design performance of PGO and the physical mechanism associated with the spatial structure in mixed dimensions (combination of sp2 and sp3) were studied. Also, the effect of defect coupling (GBs and functional groups) on the mechanical properties was revealed. Our results demonstrate that the existence of the GBs reduces the mechanical properties of PGO and show an “induction” role during the tensile fracture process. The presence of functional groups converts in-plane sp2 carbon atoms into out-of-plane sp3 hybrid carbons, causing uneven stress distribution. Moreover, the mechanical characteristics of PGO are very sensitive to the oxygen content of functional groups, which decrease with the increase of oxygen content. The weakening degree of epoxy groups is slightly greater than that of hydroxyl groups. Finally, we find that the mechanical properties of PGO will fall to the lowest values due to the defect coupling amplification mechanism when the functional groups are distributed at GBs. View Full-Text