Mechanical Response of Graphene/BN heterostructures

Graphene-based hybrid structures are being considered for novel applications due to their tailor-made electromechanical properties. In this work, we investigate the orientation-dependent mechanical responses of the vertically stacked graphene/BN and graphene/WN hybrid structures via simulations mimicking the pull-out and nanoindentation experiments. The calculated results suggest that the transverse mechanical response in terms of stiffness shows variance with the stacking order whereas the in-plane stiffness, governed by the intra-layer interactions, is invariant. The designed hybrid structures retain both stiffness and toughness required for electromechanical applications, and the predicted orientation-dependent variation in the transverse mechanical response can be exploited to design next-generation functional devices at the nanoscale.