An excellent student with research expertise and interest in molecular dynamics simulation and theory of mechanical and/or thermal transport properties in nanomaterials such as nanowires, bulk nanotwinned metals and graphene, is sought to fill a new PhD opening in my group starting in Fall 2012. Interested students should send me a detailed CV with a description of past research achievements and the names of references to frederic.sansoz@uvm.edu. Also please return the following form in order to determine whether you should continue with a more formal application: Pre-application.

I am happy to announce the publication of a book "Simulations in Nanobiotechnology", which was contributed from researchers (including iMechanicians) who have expertise in the area of nanobiotechnology. The book is aimed at presenting the current state-of-arts in computational simulations of biological objects such as proteins as well as nanomaterials such as graphene, and also bio-nano-hybrid system such as nanopore-biomolecule interactions. This book provides the insight into the simulation-based characterization in nanobiotechnology.

Understanding the adhesion between graphene and other materials is crucial for achieving more reliable graphene-based applications in electronic devices and nanocomposites. The ultra-thin profile of graphene, however, poses significant challenge to direct measurement of its adhesion property using conventional approaches. We show that there is a strong correlation between the morphology of graphene on a compliant substrate with patterned surface and the graphene-substrate adhesion.

Teng Li, Extrinsic morphology of graphene, Modelling Simul. Mater. Sci. Eng., 19, 054005 (2011)  

Call for Papers 

Journal of Nanomaterials

Annual Special Issue: Low Dimensional Carbon Nanomaterials 2012 

Dear Colleagues:

We would like to invite you to submit an abstract for the upcoming
2011 Annual Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering Sciences
(SES 2011), to be held October 12-14, 2011, at Northwestern University
in Evanston, Illinois (http://ses2011.org/). 
The area of the minisymposium is "Mechanics of Crystalline and
Composite Nanostructures", and we anticipate having a diverse and
well-respected group of theoreticians and experimentalists give
presentations on this subject.  Abstracts can be submitted by going to
the following conference website:

Nanomechanical Resonators and Their Applications in Biological/Chemical Detection: Nanomechanics Principles

Kilho Eom, Harold S. Park, Dae Sung Yoon, Taeyun Kwon 

Abstract

Hi Guys 

This is our latest paper in press on "Carbon"  

Abstract: 

Dear Colleagues:

We would like to invite you to submit an abstract for the upcoming 2011 Annual Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering Sciences (SES 2011), to be held October 12-14, 2011, at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois (http://ses2011.org/).  The area of the minisymposium is "Mechanics of Crystalline and Composite Nanostructures", and we anticipate having a diverse and well-respected group of theoreticians and experimentalists give presentations on this subject.  Abstracts can be submitted by going to the following conference website:

http://ses2011.org/submit_abstracts.php

where our minisymposium is labeled 3.1.  We look forward to seeing you at Northwestern in the fall of 2011!

The ASME Applied Mechanics and Materials Conference, McMAT-2011    (31 May ~ 2 June 2011, Chicago, IL)

Symposium 7: Low Dimensional Carbon NanoMaterials: Properties and Applications

Deadline for abstract submission: 30 Jan. 2011

We have several open postdoc positions, to be filled immediately.

The first project is focused on thermal management. The project involves the computational and theoretical analysis of graphene/graphite-metal nanocomposites and experimental work carried out by other team members. We are looking for a strong person with background in thermal and mechanical properties of materials, preferrably with background in molecular simulation.

For the other projects we are looking for candidates with expertise in mechanics of materials. Our projects are specifically focused on molecular and coarse-grain modeling of deformation and failure of soft biological materials and include a focus on collagen, spider silk, amyloid materials and other biomaterials.

  11th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics


As announced on 5 Oct. 2010, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester won the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene". Geim and Konstantin first reported the experimental observation of graphene in 2004 .  Novoselov, 36, is also the youngest physics laureate since 1973.  

A postdoctoral associate position at MIT is available immediately,
focused on the analysis and development of multifunctional thermal
management structures, by using theoretical and atomistic multiscale
modeling and simulation. This project specifically involves calculations
of thermal and mechanical properties of graphene based metal- and
polymer nanocomposites, with a focus on various aspects such as
interfacial transport properties, tunability, mutability and phonon
engineering. Additional aspects of the project relate to the general
area of mechanical energy transport in biological materials.

Graphene edges, analogous to the structure of nanotubes, can significantly influence the overall electronic and magnetic properties of graphene nanostructures, and thus have become important issues in graphene research, especially for electronic applications. In this recent paper published on PRL, we reported that the free folding of suspended graphene sheets by random mechanical stimulation has preferred folding directions. Among ~100 folded graphene edges examined by electron nanodiffraction, about 1/3 are armchair and 1/3 are zigzag. We explored the energetics of graphene folding by atomic simulation. It is shown that armchair and zigzag edges correspond to two energy minima and thus dominate the graphene folding.

Journal of Nanomaterials Special Issue
Call-for-Papers

 Low-Dimensional Carbon Nanomaterials: Synthesis, Properties, and Applications

In a previous work, substrate-modulated morphology of graphene was analyzed using a numerical Monte Carlo method. Here we present an analytical approach that explicitly relates the van der Waals interaction energy to the surface corrugation and the interfacial properties. Moreover, the effect of mismatch strain is considered, which predicts a strain-induced instability under a compressive strain and reduced corrugation under a tensile strain.

T. Li, Z. Zhang, Snap-through instability of graphene on substrates, Nanoscale Research Letters,DOI: 10.1007/s11671-009-9460-1 (2009). (Open access)

Q. Lu and R. Huang, Excess energy and deformation along free edges of graphene nanoribbons. Posted online at arXiv:0910.0912, October 2009.

PNAS 106, 10103 (2009), doi:10.1073/pnas.0905193106, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPJBalMZ824&feature=channel_page,    http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=11108.php

Thanks to Marino, I have found the reason for the difference in our bending stiffness calculation. The original discussion is here:
http://imechanica.org/node/4029

The reason why we have a higher bending stiffness is due to the dihedral term. This dihedral term does have a significant contribution to the bending stiffness. However, in Ref. [26], apparently, this dihedral term was ignored.
I have written a short document showing the contribution of the dihedral term to the bending stiffness. Please take a look at the attachment.
I received great help from Dr. Huang and Marino. Thank you very much.