On the Mechanical Properties and Thermal Stability of a Recently Synthesized Monolayer Amorphous Carbon

Recently, the first synthesis of a freestanding monolayer amorphous carbon (MAC) was reported. MAC is a pure carbon structure composed of randomly distributed five, six, seven, and eight atom rings. MAC is structurally very stable and highly fracture resistant. Its electronic properties are similar to those of boron nitride. In this work, we have investigated the mechanical properties and thermal stability of MAC models using fully atomistic reactive molecular dynamics simulations. For comparison purposes, the results are contrasted against pristine graphene (PG) models of similar dimensions. Our results show that MAC and PG exhibit distinct mechanical behavior and fracture dynamics patterns. While PG, after a critical strain threshold, goes directly from elastic to brittle regimes, MAC shows different elastic stages between these two regimes. MAC is thermally stable up to 5368 K, which is close to the melting point of PG (5643 K). These exceptional physical properties make MAC-based materials promising candidates for new technologies, such as flexible electronics.