Prediction of pull-out force of multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT)

in sword-in-sheath mode
Go Yamamoto
a
, Sen Liu
b
, Ning Hu
b,
, Toshiyuki Hashida
a
, Yaolu Liu
b
, Cheng Yan
c
, Yuan Li
d
, Hao Cui
b
,
Huiming Ning
b
, Liangke Wu
b
a
Fracture and Reliability Research Institute, Tohoku University, 6-6-01 Aramaki-Aza-Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33 Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan
c
School of Engineering Systems, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George St., GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, QLD 4001, Australia
d
Department of Nanomechanics, Tohoku University, Aramaki-Aza-Aoba 6-6-01, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 20 February 2012
Received in revised form 9 March 2012
Accepted 11 March 2012
Available online 6 April 2012
Keywords:
Multi-walled carbon nanotubes
Pull-out force
Sword-in-sheath mode
Molecular mechanics simulations
Capped section
a b s t r a c t
The pull-out force of some outer walls against other inner walls in multi-walled carbon nanotubes
(MWCNTs) was systematically studied by molecular mechanics simulations. The obtained results reveal
that the pull-out force is proportional to the square of the diameter of the immediate outer wall on the
sliding interface, which highlights the primary contribution of the capped section of MWCNT to the pull-
out force. A simple empirical formula was proposed based on the numerical results to predict the pull-out
force for an arbitrary pull-out in a given MWCNT directly from the diameter of the immediate outer wall
on the sliding interface. Moreover, tensile tests for MWCNTs with and without acid-treatment were per-
formed with a nanomanipulator inside a vacuum chamber of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to
validate the present empirical formula. It was found that the theoretical pull-out forces agree with the
present and some previous experimental results very well.
2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
It is well-known that multi-walled carbon nanotubes
(MWCNTs) are of a unique atomic structure which consists of mul-
tiple coaxial cylindrical walls with an approximate wall spacing of
0.34 nm. In general, the interaction between the walls is largely
through weak van der Waals (vdW) force rather than chemical
bonds. Therefore, some walls tend to slide easily against the others
under external loading. It has been realized that the sliding
between the walls can be used for some applications such as ultra-
high frequency longitudinal oscillators in a nano-electro-mechani-
cal system (NEMS) [1,2]. In fact, the pull-out of outer walls against
the inner walls has been frequently observed in MWCNTs under
tensile [35]. This has also been conrmed from the fracture
surfaces of various MWCNT-reinforced nanocomposites [69],
referred as sword-in-sheath fracture. To date, due to the technical
challenge for testing at nanoscale, limited experimental studies
have been conducted on the wall sliding in MWCNTs [15]. In
addition, numerical studies based on molecular mechanics (MM)
or molecular dynamics (MD) have been carried out to understand
the pull-out/sliding process [1012]. Unfortunately, the pull-out
forces numerically predicted [1012] were generally much lower
than the experiment [15], at least from 10 to several hundreds
times lower than the existing experimental data. This was
attributed to possible mechanical cross-links or interfacial fric-
tional effect [11]. Anyway, quantitative analysis on pull-out is still
lacking, despite the signicance of associated technical problems
such as suitability of MWCNTs as reinforcements in composites
or as oscillators in microsystems. In this work, we conducted
extensive experiment and MM simulations to gain a better under-
standing of the pull-out in MWCNTs. We found that the pull-out
force is proportional to the square of the diameter of the immedi-
ate outer wall on the sliding interface. More importantly, we also
realized the capped section of the MWCNT plays a critical role in
the pull-out process.
2. Computational results and discussion
In previous work [1012], the cap effect on the pull-out force
has not been well explored, which we believe may contribute to
the disagreement between the predicted pull-out force and the
experimental measurements. To overcome this problem, we con-
ducted MM simulations using the Materials Studio (Accelrys) with
emphasis on the effect of capped section of a MWCNT on the pull-
out force. The present MM approach is also termed as molecular
statics (MS) method, which is a new class of simulation technique
emerging in recent years [1215]. In this method, the nal relaxed
0927-0256/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.commatsci.2012.03.016

Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +81 43 290 3204.

E-mail address: huning@faculty.chiba-u.jp (N. Hu).
Computational Materials Science 60 (2012) 712
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Computational Materials Science
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er . com/ l ocat e/ commat sci
conguration of the atomic structure is determined using an en-
ergy minimization technique. Studies have shown that the quasi-
static characteristics of MM simulations yield a considerable
improvement in the computational efciency compared to that
of traditional MD simulations since the velocity components of
the individual atoms within the system are ignored. In other
words, the MM method is insensitive to the effects of thermal
instability and kinetic excitation [13,14], and can therefore be rea-
sonably expected to provide an accurate representation of the low
strain rate deformation of nano-scale materials. As a result, the
MM approach has been increasingly employed in recent years as
a means of gaining insights into the mechanical properties of crys-
tal lattice structure of common engineering materials, e.g., silicon
in [13,14], and SWCNTs as veried by MD computations in [15].
Inversely, it is well-known that the traditional MD method deems
to be suitable for high loading rate (10
6
10
12
/s) or extremely short
time process. Its loading rate is much higher than that applied in
practical quasi-static experiments (e.g., at the order of 10
2
/s),
and thus the effects of deformation-induced thermal uctuations
in the atomic conguration may be overstated compared to those
observed in the experimental case. Therefore, it seems that the
traditional MD method can never be applied in simulating the
quasi-static cases in laboratory. Of course, this point does not
invalidate the great value for MD to provide helpful insights on
the mechanism of macro-scale deformation, even at some unreal-
istic conditions. From some previous studies using traditional MD
computations, e.g., for the yield strength of nano-voided copper
under hydrostatic loading and uniaxial loading [16], and tensile
strength of single crystal of tungsten specimens [17], it was found
that when applied strain rate is lower than 10
6
/s [16] and 10
7
/s
[17], the results of traditional MD becomes converged and
rate-independent. Therefore, under the above loading rates, the
MD results might be comparable with quasi-static experimental
ones. Naturally, the above limits of loading rate depend on the type
of materials and loading patterns, etc. On contrary, the present MM
method is not suitable for the cases of high loading rate since the
atomic inertia effects are neglected. From the above conclusions
[16,17], it may be roughly predicted that if the experimental load-
ing rate is lower than 10
6
/s or 10
7
/s, which is much higher than
that of the practical quasi-static experiments (i.e., at the order of
10
2
/s), the present MM method could be valid and comparable
with experimental results.
The basic idea of the present analysis is to evaluate the variation
of potential minimum energy during a pull-out process. By
neglecting some possible energy dissipations (e.g., thermal dissipa-
tion), the work done by the pull-out force and the variation of the
potential energy can be used to work out the pull-out force. Firstly,
with only considering the vdW interactions on the interface, a
double-walled carbon nanotube (DWCNT) was modeled with a
pull-out force F (Fig. 1a). To simplify the analysis, the inner capped
tube was divided into two parts, i.e., the completely embedded
capped tube with a pull-out force F
1
(Fig. 1b), and the partially
embedded tube with a pull-out force F
2
(Fig. 1c). The total pull-
out force F should be the sum of F
1
and F
2
.
The analysis of the pull-out process (Fig. 1b) was mainly divided
into two steps: (1) the xed boundary conditions were applied to
the atoms of the outer cap (red atoms
1
in Fig. 1b), and then (2)
the inner wall was pulled out step-by-step along the axial direction
by applying a constant prescribed displacement increment Dx of
0.01 nm on the atoms of the left top end of the inner wall. After
each pull-out step, the structure was relaxed to obtain the mini-
mum potential energy E. In our previous work [12], it was found
that pull-out force of an uncapped DWCNT was only proportional
to the diameter of the outer wall, and independent of the nanotube
length and chirality. For this reason, the models with different
diameters were built up to investigate the cap effect. The calcu-
lated energy increments (DE) between two consecutive pull-out
steps of three DWCNTs are shown in Fig. 2a where D is the diam-
eter of the outer wall. Here, D is dened as the immediate outer
wall at the sliding interface, i.e., diameter of sliding interface. In
Fig. 2a, it can be seen that the energy increment DE increases rap-
idly up to a peak value at a specied displacement (labeled as Stage
I in Fig. 2a), and then keeps steady with increase of pull-out dis-
placement (Stage II in Fig. 2a). The peak value of DE also increases
with D. The DE starts to decrease after reaching the peak value
(Stage III). The same features were also observed in the simulation
of two other DWCNTs with larger diameters, i.e., (54, 54)/(59, 59)
with D of 8.0 nm and (83, 83)/(88, 88) with D of 11.933 nm. Corre-
sponding to the Stage II, the maximum pull-out force can be eval-
uated by using the relationship between the potential energy
variation and the work done by the pull-out force. The average
maximum energy increment, i.e., DE
max
, for the ve DWCNTs with
different D is shown in Fig. 2b. The relationship between the DE
max
and D can be perfectly tted into a quadratic function (Fig. 2b) as
follows:
DE
max
2:09D
2
2:15D 0:94 in kcal=mol with
10% fitting error 1
To understand this potential energy increment in detail, we further
divided the inner wall (Fig. 1b) into two parts, i.e., the cap and the
tube (Fig. 3a). The corresponding pull-out forces for these two parts
are F
1
1
and F
2
1
, respectively and F
1
F
1
1
F
2
1
.
x
y
(a)
F
2nm
(c)
F
2
(b) Atoms with prescribed
displacements
F
1
Fig. 1. MM simulation of pull-out process of a DWCNT. (a) Schematic diagram of a
DWCNT model; (b) sub-problem 1 of (a); (c) sub-problem 2 of (a).
1
For interpretation of color in Figs. 16, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.
8 G. Yamamoto et al. / Computational Materials Science 60 (2012) 712
It was found that the energy increment shown in Fig. 2a was
dominated by the pull-out of the cap part. The pull-out of the inner
tube did not cause the change of the potential energy, i.e., F
2
1
0.
The reason can be explained using Fig. 3b. If the length of the outer
tube is long enough, the carbon atoms of the inner tube are always
in force equilibrium. For example, in Fig. 3b, the atoms in red are
balanced by the symmetrical horizontal forces from the atoms of
the outer wall, which are within the cut-off distance of Lennard
Jones potential [18,19]. During a pull-out process, the relative
motion of the atoms between the inner and outer walls creates
repetitive breaking and reforming of the vdW interactions and no
resultant resistance force can be generated on the inner tube.
The quadratic form of the energy increment in Eq. (1) due to the
cap effect is associated with the surface energy density. Consider-
ing a cap model shown in Fig. 3c, the bottom edge is just located on
the boundary between the cap and the tube. If we use c
max
and c
min
to represent the maximum and minimum potential energy
variation per unit area under a specied separation displacement,
c
max
is at the top of the cap, and c
min
appears at the bottom. Then,
the surface energy variation of per unit area is assumed to vary
from the top to the bottom of the cap in a function of
c(/) = c
max
cos (90 /) = c
max
sin /, which implies that c
min
= 0.
This is reasonable as F
2
1
0. Then, the total surface energy varia-
tion of the cap can be calculated as
W
cap

Z
2p
0
Z
p=2
0
c/Rcos / Rd/

dh

pD
2
2
Z
p=2
0
c/ cos /d/
pD
2
4
c
max
2
From Eq. (2), regardless of the function of c(/), the surface en-
ergy variation is always proportional to pD
2
. As a result, the energy
increment of the cap during the pull-out can be described by a qua-
dratic function of D. Approximately, the c
max
at the small top at
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350

E
m
a
x

(
k
c
a
l
/
m
o
l
)
Fitted quadratic curve
MM simulation results
Diameter (nm)
(a)
(b)
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
0
3
6
9
Pull-out displacement x(nm)
E
n
e
r
g
y

i
n
c
r
e
m
e
n
t

E

(
k
c
a
l
/
m
o
l
)
(5,5)/(10,10), D=1.36nm
(10,10)/(15,15), D=2.03nm
(12,12)/(17,17), D=2.31nm
0
Stage-II
Stage-III
Stage-I
Fig. 2. MM simulation results. (a) Energy increment versus pull-out displacement
for model in Fig. 1b; (b) relationship between CNT diameter and maximum energy
increment in Stage II.

max

min
x
y
z

(d)
(c)
(b)
F
1
1
F
1
2
(a)
Fig. 3. Schematic diagram for discussion on MM results. (a) Decomposition of sub-problem 1 in Fig. 1b; (b) force state of a tube part only; (c) estimation of energy variation of
a cap area; (d) two graphite sheets for calculating c
max
.
G. Yamamoto et al. / Computational Materials Science 60 (2012) 712 9
area of the cap during pull-out process can be predicted in the
same way as the separation of two at graphite sheets in the nor-
mal direction of graphite sheets (Fig. 3d). This was conrmed by
the similar displacement-energy increment curves (Fig. 2a) ob-
tained from the simulation of two graphite sheets. In Stage II, c
max
corresponding to the displacement increment of 0.01 nm was
around 0.355 kcal/nm
2
. Substituting this value into Eq. (2) leads
to the total surface energy increment as W
cap
= 2.764D
2
(kcal/
mol) under 0.01 nm separation displacement in the normal direc-
tion of the graphite sheets, termed as normal separation mode.
This result is approximately equivalent to Eq. (1) for DE
max
, which
again indicates that the quadratic form of Eq. (1) is appropriate.
Note that the deformation mode signicantly affects the value of
c
max
. For instance, we also calculated the c
s
max
of the two graphite
sheets in a pure shear sliding mode, which means that the twp
graphite sheets slide in two opposite in-plane directions by keep-
ing the constant distance in the normal direction of graphite plane.
It was found that the c
s
max
under shear is about 3.54 times lower
than the c
max
in the normal separation mode. This nding further
highlights the contribution of the cap to DE
max
not only from its
large area (/D
2
), but also from its higher density of surface energy
variation under normal separation mode.
After validating Eq. (1), it becomes easy to predict the pull-out
force F
1
. Corresponding to the stable Stage II in Fig. 2a, the maxi-
mum pull-out force is simply evaluated by equaling the work done
by the pull-out force to the DE
max
, i.e.,
DE
max
F
1
Dx; 3
where Dx is chosen as 0.01 nm, i.e., the pull-out displacement incre-
ment in Stage II, and then
F
1
1:451D
2
1:493D 0:65 4
where F
1
is of the unit of nN, and D of nm.
For F
2
shown schematically in Fig. 1c, our previous study
showed, the potential energy change during the pull-out process
was only dominated by the atoms located within an approximate
range of 1 nm centered by the left end of the outer wall [20]. From
our previous work [12], this force was obtained to be proportional
to D as follows
F
2
1:15D 0:45 5
Note that F
2
is much smaller than F
1,
because of less atoms contrib-
uting to the vdW interactions and the much lower density of
surface energy variation under shear, as mentioned before. For the
pull-out in Fig. 1c, the systematic potential energy variation is,
W
exit
= (2pc
2
Dx)D = 1.27D (kcal/mol) corresponding to 0.01 nm dis-
placement increment. Here c
2
is obtained from our previous study
[12]. Clearly, W
exit
is much lower than W
cap
.
Finally, the total pull-out force F (Fig. 1a) was simply evaluated
as
F F
1
F
2
1:451D
2
0:343D 0:20
in nN with 10% fitting error 6
Naturally, the above analysis is largely for DWCNTs. For MWCNTs,
the sword-in-sheath fracture mode is categorized into the two sim-
plied models, as shown in Fig. 4a (Case 1) and Fig. 4b (Case 2). Case
1 is a pull-out process at an arbitrary interface. As conrmed in
[12,20], except for the immediate two outer and inner walls from
the sliding interface, the contributions of other walls away from
the sliding interface can be neglected. Therefore, we only consid-
ered the immediate two outer and two inner walls (Fig. 4a). Case
2 denoted the sliding between the outmost wall and its adjacent in-
ner wall. We only considered the immediate two inner walls and
the outmost wall near the sliding interface. Using the existing
results for F
2
[12], and the newly obtained results for F
1
in Cases
1 and 2, the pull-out forces in the MWCNTs can be approximately
evaluated as
F
MWCNT
1:29F Case 1 in nN with 10% fitting error 7a
F
MWCNT
1:14F Case 2 in nN with 10% fitting error 7b
where F is the pull-out force for DWCNTs (Eq. (6)). Note that the
above empirical equations are only applicable for the sword-in-
sheath fracture mode in a MWCNT. In some cases, the entire
cross-section of MWCNTs can break under tension load [21].
3. Experimental verications
To verify the simulation above, we performed the tensile test of
MWCNTs. The MWCNT material (acquired fromNano Carbon Tech-
nologies Corporation; Tokyo, Japan) was synthesized by a catalytic
chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) method followed by high tem-
perature annealing. The typical diameter and length of the pristine
MWCNTs measured by scanning electron microscopy (SEM, Hit-
achi S-4300) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM, Hitachi
HF-2000) are in the range of 33124 nm (70 nm in average) and
1.122.5 lm (average: 8.7 lm) (Fig. 5a), respectively. It can found
that the pristine MWCNTs are of high purity and very good crystal
lattice state without obvious defects on surface. Since our empiri-
cal model strongly depends on the diameter of the immediate out-
er wall on sliding interface, to create the initial defects on the
MWCNTs for triggering the different sliding interfaces, some pris-
tine MWCNTs were reuxed in a concentrated H
2
SO
4
:HNO
3
(3:1
volume ratio) mixture at 70 C for 2 h, washed thoroughly with
distill water, and then nally dried in air at 60 C. Some chan-
nel-like defects around the circumference of the MWCNTs were
observed after the acid-treatment, as shown in Fig. 5b. Another
reason to performthe acid-treatment on MWCNTs is that this tech-
nique is now widely employed in fabrication of CNT based nano-
composites. This acid-treatment can add the so-called carboxylic
acid groups of COOH on MWCNTs, which impair the strong
attractive interactions among MWCNTs themselves owing to the
van der Waals forces and decrease the agglomeration. Moreover,
these carboxylic acid groups allow MWCNTs to form covalent link-
ages with polymer matrices, which therefore improve the interfa-
cial properties [22,23]. The present tensile tests of individual
MWCNTs were performed with a nanomanipulator [4,24] inside
the vacuum chamber of a SEM (FEI Quanta 600 FEG). The loading
speed of crosshead was around 100 nm/s. By employing this exper-
imental loading speed and the average length of MWCNTs
(8.7 lm), the loading rate can be approximately obtained as
Sliding interface
Case 2
(a)
(b)
Sliding interface
Case 1
Fig. 4. Models of MWCNTs. (a) Schematic diagram for the rst simplied case of
MWCNT (Case 1); (b) schematic diagram for the second simplied case of MWCNT
(Case 2).
10 G. Yamamoto et al. / Computational Materials Science 60 (2012) 712
1.15 10
2
/s, which implies that the present experiment is a typ-
ically quasi-static one. Therefore, as discussed in Section 2, the
present MM method is extremely suitable for this case. The details
of the tensile experiment are described elsewhere [5]. Ten pristine
MWCNTs and ten acid-treated MWCNTs were tested and they all
failed in the sword-in-sheath mode. As shown in Fig. 5cf, for a
typical sample after acid-treatment, the sword and sheath parts
can be clearly identied. The diameter of the sword part (Ds) of
each MWCNT was measured using SEM at a magnication of
100,000, Fig. 5f.
The pull-out forces measured experimentally are compared
with the prediction using Eqs. (7a) and (7b), as shown in Fig. 6.
Firstly, the original diameters of MWCNTs D
0
was used for the
prediction as shown in the inset of Fig. 6. It can be seen that the
pull-out force for the acid-treated MWCNTs is lower than that of
pristine ones with the same diameter. Although the numerical
prediction for Cases 1 and 2 catches the trend of the experimental
evaluation, a data scattering is observed. Instead, we used the
diameter of sliding interface, i.e., D, which is equal to Ds + 0.68 nm
as the wall space is about 0.34 nm and a better agreement between
the experimental and numerical prediction is achieved for both the
pristine and acid-treated MWCNTs. The experimental observation
indicates that most samples fall into the Case 1 failure pattern
but the Case 2 pattern is still possible, conrmed by the observa-
tion in a few samples. For the acid-treated MWCNTs, the sword-
in-sheath fracture generally starts from the channel-like defects
(Fig. 5b). On the other hand, for the pristine MWCNTs, we need to
double check whether or not the analysis can be applied to the par-
ticular case where the outmost walls break before the sword-in-
sheath type pull-out can be triggered. Based on our previous exper-
iment [5], for instance, the tensile load needed to break 10 outmost
walls of the MWCNTs (average diameter 70 nm) is only around
1300 nN, which is much lower than the pull-out force obtained
in the present work (Fig. 6). This conrms the current analysis is
valid for both the pristine and acid treated MWCNTs. In addition,
we also compared the numerical results with other experimental
results [13] and a good agreement has been observed (Fig. 6),
which further validates the effectiveness of the proposed empirical
formulas.
4. Conclusions
In conclusion, based on experiment and detailed MM simula-
tions, the present work proposed an empirical theory for prediction
of the pull-out forces in DWCNTs and MWCNTs, provided they fail
in a sword-in-sheath mode. We found that the pull-out force is
dominated by the contribution from the capped section of a carbon
nanotube due to larger number of atoms and higher density of sur-
face energy variation. This nding fully explained the controversial
results recently observed in evaluation of pull-out phenomenon in
carbon nanotubes and provides a basis for further investigation on
the complicated pull-out of carbon nanotube from other matrix
materials such as polymers in nanocomposites, where there is
obvious inconsistence between the numerical results and the
experimental data [2527].
D
S
(a)
(b)
(c) (d)
(e) (f)
Fig. 5. Experiments. (a) TEM picture of a pristine MWCNT; (b) TEM picture of an
acid-treated MWCNT; (c) SEM picture of tensile experiment; (d) sword part of the
MWCNT in (c) after test; (e) sheath part of the MWCNT in (c) after test; (f) enlarged
illustration of (d).
Case 1
Case 2
Case 2
45 60 75
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
P
u
l
l
-
o
u
t
f
o
r
c
e
F
(
n
N
)
D0(nm)
Case 1
Case 2
Fig. 6. Comparison between numerical results and experimental ones for verica-
tion of numerical results.
G. Yamamoto et al. / Computational Materials Science 60 (2012) 712 11
Acknowledgements
This work is partly supported by two Grand-in-Aids for Scien-
tic Research (Nos. 19360045 and 22360044) from the Japanese
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
The authors acknowledge Prof. R.S. Ruoff (The University of Texas
at Austin, USA) for providing experimental utilities and Prof. C.B.
Fan (Beijing Institute of Technology, China) for kindly providing
the computational resources.
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