Compressive characteristics of single walled carbon nanotube with water interactions investigated by using molecular dynamics simulation

• The elastic properties of CNTs with water interaction under compression.
• Aspect ratio, chirality and defects has significant influence on compression behavior.
• Findings from this study hold key promise for design of nano-fluidic devices.

The elastic properties of single walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) with surrounding water interactions are studied using molecular dynamics simulation technique. The compressive loading characteristic of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in a fluidic medium such as water is critical for its role in determining the lifetime and stability of CNT based nano-fluidic devices. In this paper, we conducted a comprehensive analysis on the effect of geometry, chirality and density of encapsulated water on the elastic properties of SWCNT. Our studies show that defect density and distribution can strongly impact the compressive resistance of SWCNTs in water. Further studies were conducted on capped SWCNTs with varying densities of encapsulated water, which is necessary to understand the strength of CNT as a potential drug carrier. The results obtained from this paper will help determining the potential applications of CNTs in the field of nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS) such as nano-biological and nano-fluidic devices.