Molecular dynamics study on the tensile properties of graphene/Cu nanocomposite

In this paper, the mechanical properties, including elastic properties, deformation mechanism, dislocation formation and crack propagation of graphene/Cu (G/Cu) nanocomposite under uniaxial tension are studied by molecular dynamics (MD) method and the strain rate dependence is also investigated. Firstly, through the comparative analysis of tensile results of single crystal copper (Cu), single slice graphene/Cu (SSG/Cu) nanocomposite and double slice graphene/Cu (DSG/Cu) nanocomposite, it is found that the G/Cu nanocomposites have larger initial equivalent elastic modulus and tensile ultimate strength comparing with Cu and the more content of graphene, the greater the tensile strength of composites. Afterwards, by analyzing the tensile results of SSG/Cu nanocomposite under different strain rates, we find that the tensile ultimate strength of SSG/Cu nanocomposite increases with the increasing of strain rate gradually, but the initial equivalent elastic modulus basically remains unchanged.