Effective mechanical properties of hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets

Abstract

We propose an analytical formulation to extract from energy equivalence principles theequivalent thickness and in-plane mechanical properties (tensile and shear rigidity, andPoisson’s ratio) of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) nanosheets. The model developedprovides not only very good agreement with existing data available in the open literaturefrom experimental, density functional theory (DFT) and molecular dynamics (MD)simulations, but also highlights the specific deformation mechanisms existing inboron nitride sheets, and their difference with carbon-based graphitic systems.