Ultrahigh torsional stiffness and strength of boron nitride nanotubes

Ultrahigh torsional stiffness and strength of boron nitride nanotubes Ultrahigh torsional stiffness and strength of boron nitride nanotubes

Jonathan Garel,¹ Itai Leven,² Chunyi Zhi,³ K.S. Nagapriya,¹ Ronit Popovitz-Biro,⁴ Dmitri Golberg,³ Yoshio Bando,³ Oded Hod,² Ernesto Joselevich¹

1) Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovoth 76100, Israel
2) School of Chemistry, The Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
3) International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Namiki 1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan
4) Department of Chemical Research Support, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovoth 76100, Israel

We report the experimental and theoretical study of boron nitride nanotube (BNNT) torsional mechanics. We show that BNNTs exhibit a much stronger mechanical interlayer coupling than carbon nanotubes (CNTs). This feature makes BNNTs up to 1 order of magnitude stiffer and stronger than CNTs. We attribute this interlayer locking to the faceted nature of BNNTs, arising from the polarity of the B-N bond. This property makes BNNTs superior candidates to replace CNTs in nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), fibers, and nanocomposites.

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