Chirality- and curvature-dependent bending stiffness of single layer graphene

An analytical molecular mechanics model is developed to relate the bending properties of a single layer graphene to its atomic structure. Explicit expression for the bending stiffness of graphene with arbitrary chirality is derived. The results show that the bending stiffness of graphene depends significantly on the chiral angle, especially when the bending curvature is large. Curvature can induce significant anisotropic bending properties of graphene. The present analytical results are helpful for understanding of chirality- and curvature-dependent bending properties of graphene and thus useful for potential applications of graphene as a bending component of nano devices. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3660739]