Elastic properties of hybrid graphene/boron nitride monolayer

Recently, hybridized monolayers consisting of hexagonal boron nitride ( h -BN) phases inside a graphene layer have been synthesized and shown to be an effective way of opening band gap in graphene monolayers (Ci et al. in Nat Mater 9(5):430–435, 2010 ). In this paper, we report a first-principles density functional theory study of the h -BN domain size effect on the elastic properties of graphene/boron nitride hybrid monolayers ( h -BNC). We found that both in-plane stiffness and longitudinal sound velocity of h -BNC linearly decrease with h -BN concentration. Our results could be used for the design of future graphene-based nanodevices of surface acoustic wave sensors and waveguides.