Effect of pressure on nanomaterials

A simple theory is proposed to predict the effect of pressure on nanomaterials, which gets support from the Mie–Gruneisen theory of thermal expansivity as formulated by Born and Huang. We considered LiAlSi2O6 to study the effect of pressure in the light of other formulations, viz. Murnaghan, Birch–Murnaghan, Vinet and Kumar. The results obtained are found to present a good agreement with the experimental data as well as other formulations. To confirm the validity of the formulation, we applied the method to study the compression behaviour of a number of nanomaterials, viz. CdSe, Rb3C60, Ni(20 nm), carbon nanotube, γ-Fe2O3, ε-Fe (Hexagonal iron), MgO, CuO, γ-Al2O3 (67 nm), α-Fe2O3, α-Fe (filled nanotube), TiO2 (anatase ), 3C-SiC (30 nm), TiO2 (rutile phase), Zr0.1Ti0.9O2, AlN (hexagonal), γ-Si3N4, Ni-filled MWCNT and Fe-filled MWCNT. The results obtained are compared with the experimental data. A good agreement between theory and experiment demonstrates the validity of the present approach.