Event

The three dimensional shapes of graphene sheets produced by nanoscale cut-and--join kirigami are studied by combining large-scale atomistic modelling with continuum elastic theory. Lattice segments are selectively removed from a flat graphene sheet and the structure is allowed to close and reconstruct by relaxing in the third dimension. The surface relaxation is limited by a nonzero bending modulus which produces a smoothly modulated landscape instead of the ridge-and-plateau motif found in macroscopic lattice kirigami. The resulting surface shapes and their interactions are well described by a new set of microscopic kirigami rules that resolve the competition between the bending and stretching energies. Applications to designing structures with strain induced gauge fields will be discussed.