Thermal crumpling of perforated two-dimensional sheets. Issue 1 (December 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Yllanes, David; Bhabesh, Sourav; Nelson, David; Bowick, Mark
• Is Part Of: Nature communications. Volume 8:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 8
• Publication Date: 2017-12
• Subjects: Biology -- Periodicals; Physical sciences -- Periodicals; 505
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01551-y
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2041-1723

Abstract

Abstract Thermalized elastic membranes without distant self-avoidance are believed to undergo a crumpling transition when the microscopic bending stiffness is comparable tokT, the scale of thermal fluctuations. Most potential physical realizations of such membranes have a bending stiffness well in excess of experimentally achievable temperatures and are therefore unlikely ever to access the crumpling regime. We propose a mechanism to tune the onset of the crumpling transition by altering the geometry and topology of the sheet itself. We carry out extensive molecular dynamics simulations of perforated sheets with a dense periodic array of holes and observe that the critical temperature is controlled by the total fraction of removed area, independent of the precise arrangement and size of the individual holes. The critical exponents for the perforated membrane are compatible with those of the standard crumpling transition. Two-dimensional elastic membranes show great potential as functional materials, but how to engineer them with tunable mechanical properties remains challenging. Here, Yllanes et al. propose a method to induce the onset of crumpling transition in graphene-like sheets by simply altering their geometries.