TY - JOUR
T1 - Stiffening thermal membranes by cutting
AU - Russell, Emily R.
AU - Sknepnek, Rastko
AU - Bowick, Mark
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge the support and hospitality of the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM) at Brown University, which hosted us and where E.R.R. was supported as a postdoctoral fellow while we were carrying out this research. We thank David R. Nelson, Andrej Komrlj, Francesco Serafin, and Suraj Shankar for invaluable discussions. This research was conducted using computational resources at the Center for Computation and Visualization, Brown University. Some figures and the supplementary videos were created using the Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) software [33,34]. The research of M.J.B. was supported by the NSF DMREF Grant No. DMR-1435794. R.S. thanks the U.K. EPSRC (Grant No. EP/M009599/1) for funding. We thank the anonymous referee for suggesting that we think about twist at the end of the ribbon.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Physical Society.
PY - 2017/7/10
Y1 - 2017/7/10
N2 - Two-dimensional crystalline membranes have recently been realized experimentally in systems such as graphene and molybdenum disulfide, sparking a resurgence in interest in their statistical properties. Thermal fluctuations can significantly affect the effective mechanical properties of properly thermalized membranes, renormalizing both bending rigidity and elastic moduli so that in particular they become stiffer to bending than their bare bending rigidity would suggest. We use molecular dynamics simulations to examine how the mechanical behavior of thermalized two-dimensional clamped ribbons (cantilevers) depends on their precise topology and geometry. We find that a simple slit smooths roughness as measured by the variance of height fluctuations. This counterintuitive effect may be due to the counterposed coupling of the lips of the slit to twist in the intact regions of the ribbon.
AB - Two-dimensional crystalline membranes have recently been realized experimentally in systems such as graphene and molybdenum disulfide, sparking a resurgence in interest in their statistical properties. Thermal fluctuations can significantly affect the effective mechanical properties of properly thermalized membranes, renormalizing both bending rigidity and elastic moduli so that in particular they become stiffer to bending than their bare bending rigidity would suggest. We use molecular dynamics simulations to examine how the mechanical behavior of thermalized two-dimensional clamped ribbons (cantilevers) depends on their precise topology and geometry. We find that a simple slit smooths roughness as measured by the variance of height fluctuations. This counterintuitive effect may be due to the counterposed coupling of the lips of the slit to twist in the intact regions of the ribbon.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevE.96.013002
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevE.96.013002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85022209793
SN - 1063-651X
VL - 96
JO - Physical Review E - Statistical Physics, Plasmas, Fluids, and Related Interdisciplinary Topics
JF - Physical Review E - Statistical Physics, Plasmas, Fluids, and Related Interdisciplinary Topics
IS - 1
M1 - 013002
ER -