Molecular Dynamic Simulation for Penetration of Carbon Nanotubes into an Array of Carbon Nnantotubes

When two layers of carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays are loaded to mate, the free ends of individual CNTs come into contact at the interface of the two layers. This leads to a higher contact resistance due to a smaller contact region. However, when the free CNT ends of one array penetrate into the mating array, the contact region increases, effectively lowering the contact resistance. To explore the penetration of mating CNTs, we perform molecular dynamic simulations of a simple unit cell model, incorporating four CNTs in the lower array layer coupled with a single moving CNT on the upper layer. The interaction with neighboring CNTs is modelled by long-range carbon bond order potential (LCBOP I). The model structure is optimized by energy minimization through the conjugate gradient method. A NVT ensemble is used for maintain a room temperature during simulation. The time integration is performed through the velocity-Verlet algorithm. A significant vibrational motion of CNTs is captured when penetration is not available, resulting in a specific vibration mode with a high frequency. Due to this vibrational behavior, the random behaviors of CNT motion for predicting the penetration are confirmed under the specific gap distances between CNTs. Thus, the probability of penetration is examined according to the gap distance between CNTs in the lower array and the aspect ratio of CNTs. The penetration is significantly affected by the vibration mode due to the van der Waals forces between CNTs.