Insights into molecular and bulk mechanical properties of glassy carbon through molecular dynamics simulations and mechanical tensile testing

With increasing interest in the use of glassy carbon (GC) for a broad range of application areas, the need for developing a fundamental understanding of its mechanical properties has come to the forefront. Furthermore, recent theoretical and modeling works that highlight the synthesis of GC via the pyrolysis of polymer precursors has explored the possibilities of a revisit to the investigation of their mechanical properties at a fundamental level. Although there are isolated reports on the experimental determination of its elastic modulus, insights into the stress-strain behavior of a GC material under tension and compression obtained through simulations, either at the molecular level or for the bulk materials, are missing. This study fills the gap at the molecular level and investigates the mechanical properties of GC using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, which model the atomistic-level formation and breaking of bonds using bond-order-based reactive force field formulations. The molecular model considered in this simulation has a characteristic 3D cage-like structure of five-, six-, and seven-membered carbon rings and graphitic domains of a flat graphene-like structure. The GC molecular model was subjected to loading under varying strain rates (0.4, 0.6, 1.25, and 2.5 ns−1) and temperatures (300 K–800 K) in each of the three axes: x, y, and z. The simulations show that the GC nanostructure has distinct stress-strain curves under tension and compression. In tension, MD modeling predicted a mean elastic modulus of 5.71GPa for a single GC nanostructure with some dependency on the strain rate and temperature, whereas, in compression, the elastic modulus was also found to depend on the strain rate and temperature and was predicted to have a mean value of 35 GPa. To validate the simulation results and develop experimental insights into the bulk behavior, mechanical tests were conducted on dog-bone-shaped testing coupons that were subjected to uniaxial tension and loaded until failure. The GC test coupons demonstrated a bulk modulus of 17 ±2.69 GPa in tension, which compares well with those reported in the literature. However, comparing MD simulation outcomes to those of uniaxial mechanical testing reveals that the bulk modulus of GC in tension found experimentally is higher than the modulus of single GC nanostructures predicted by MD modeling, which inherently underestimates the bulk modulus. With regard to failure modes, the MD simulations predicted failure in tension accompanied by the breaking of carbon rings within the molecular structure. In contrast, the mechanical testing demonstrated that failure modes are dominated by brittle failure planes largely due to the amorphous structure of GC.