Wrinkles and Wrinklons in Graphene and Graphene Nanoribbons Under Strain

Wrinkling of thin films and membranes is frequently observed in nature. Graphene, which represents one layer of carbon atoms or thick carbon membrane have unusual mechanical and physical properties. Particularly, graphene has high stretching stiffness in combination with very low bending stiffness and its flat configuration is easily lost under external factors such as strain, temperature or segregation of other atoms. Compressive in-plane stresses applied to graphene and graphene nanoribbons lead to the wrinkles generation. Wrinklons, which are transition zones where two or more wrinkles merge into one, appear to minimize the total potential energy of a graphene under compressive stress. The mechanical and physical properties of corrugated graphene are considerably different from those of flat graphene and can be intentionally altered by controllable wrinkling. In this review, both the recent results on wrinkling of graphene and the effect of the corrugation on the graphene properties are presented together with the description of the potential applications of the corrugated structures for the production of novel bulk carbon nanomaterials.