Buckling of peapods, fullerenes and nanotubes

In this paper, the buckling under an applied external pressure and the self-buckling of nanostructures, such as peapods, nanotubes and fullerenes, is numerically treated with Molecular Dynamics simulations and compared with theoretical calculations. The self-buckling is due to the interaction among the nanostructures caused by the surface energy; it is peculiar to the nanoscale and does not have a macroscopiic counterpart. Atomistic simulations confirm that the influence on a single nanostructure from the surrounding nanostructures in a crystal, is nearly identical to that of a liquid with surface tension equal to the surface energy of the solid.