Monomolecular wire cutting of copper nanocolumns via carbyne

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Abstract

In many sci-fi works, a monomolecular wire – a single chain of atoms – is “sharp” enough to slice through any material, no matter how strong. Carbyne – a one-dimensional monoatomistic chain of sp-hybridized carbon atoms – reflects an extreme minimalist molecular chain. Carbyne is also known to have a relatively high axial tensile stiffness and, due to its monoatomistic cross-section, incredible specific strength and high surface area per given mass. We propose its use as a cutting instrument — e.g., a monomolecular slicing wire. Herein, we construct and model a simple arrangement of a copper nanocolumn set perpendicular to a carbyne thread. We proceed to move the wire normal to the copper surface, testing the cutting efficacy of the wire. We vary both the width of copper column, as well as the length of cutting wire, to parametrically explore cutting conditions. We further develop and validate a general energy-based mechanical model to predict cutting limits, enabling predictions for other material systems, based on a simple energy balance, resulting in a simple relation for critical cutting “stroke”.

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Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

S.W.C. acknowledges prior support from Northeastern University. Also, his wife for putting up with him as he ran simulations from home. Current employer, Cell Press, had no influence on this study. The author dedicates the work in memory of Conor Larkin’s. The calculations and the analysis were carried out using a Dell multi-core laptop workstation. Visualization has been carried out using the VMD visualization package [41].

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