We present a new reactive force field ReaxFF(HBN) derived to accurately model large molecular and condensed phase systems of H, B, and N atoms. ReaxFF(HBN) has been tested against quantum calculation data for B-H, B-B, and B-N bond dissociations and for H-B-H, B-N-B, and N-B-N bond angle strain energies of various molecular clusters. The accuracy of the developed ReaxFF(HBN) for B-N-H systems i...

We report free-standing atomic crystals that are strictly 2D and can be viewed as individual atomic planes pulled out of bulk crystals or as unrolled single-wall nanotubes. By using micromechanical cleavage, we have prepared and studied a variety of 2D crystals including single layers of boron nitride, graphite, several dichalcogenides, and complex oxides. These atomically thin sheets (essentia...

First principles calculations based on density functional theory predict a highly selective adsorption site for Mg atoms and negligible preference for the growth of Mg islands on the tubular surface of Mg-intercalated (small diameter) boron nanotubes, thereby establishing the criterion for understanding the growth mechanism of single-walled boron nanotubes (SWBNTs) supported by magnesium. On th...

The size-dependent bending modulus of nanotubes, which was widely observed in most existing three-point bending experiments [e.g., J. Phys. Chem. B 117, 4618-4625 (2013)], has been tacitly assumed to originate from the shear effect. In this paper, taking boron nitride nanotubes as an example, we directly measured the shear effect by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and found that the shear e...

We report the fabrication of and investigations into the dielectric and thermal properties of epoxy/boron nitride nanotube (BNNT) composites. It was found that BNNT fillers can effectively adjust the dielectric constant of epoxy. Moreover, the thermal conductivity of epoxy was improved by up to 69 % with 5 wt % BNNTs. Our studies indicate that BNNTs are promising nanofillers for polymers, to ob...

Abstract: Electrical sensitivity of a boron nitride nanotube (BNNT) was examined toward (C3H4) molecule by using density functional theory (DFT) calculations at the B3LYP/6-31G (d) level, and it was found that the adsorption energy (Ead) of methylacetylene (C3H4) the pristine nanotubes is a bout -1.78kcal/mol. But when nanotube have been doped with Si and Al atomes, the adsorption energy of me...

Continuum based models are presented here for certain boron nitride and carbon nanostructures. In particular, certain fullerene interactions, C(60)-C(60), B(36)N(36)-B(36)N(36) and C(60)-B(36)N(36), and fullerene-nanotube oscillator interactions, C(60)-boron nitride nanotube, C(60)-carbon nanotube, B(36)N(36)-boron nitride nanotube and B(36)N(36)-carbon nanotube, are studied using the Lennard-...