Kinks and antikinks of buckled graphene and their relation to the φ⁴ field model

Graphene kinks are topological excitations of long graphene membranes buckled in the transverse direction [1]. Their remarkable properties – the nanoscale size, stability, high propagation speed, and low energy dissipation – make them well positioned to be used in applications involving the nanoscale motion. Here we establish an analogy between the graphene kinks and classical φ⁴ model. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we investigated the dynamics of a buckled graphene nanoribbon with a single kink and with a kink-antikink pair. Several features of the φ⁴ model have been observed including the kink-antikink capture at low energies, kink-antikink reflection at high energies, and a bounce resonance. Our results pave the way towards the experimental observation of a rich variety of φ⁴ model predictions based on graphene.

[1] R. D. Yamaletdinov, V. A. Slipko and Y. V. Pershin, Phys. Rev. B 96, 094306 (2017)