• Haifei Zhan, Zhejiang University
• Gang Zhang, Institute of High Performance Computing, Singapore
• Yuantong Gu, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

The advancing of nanotechnology has enabled the fabrication of high-performance functional materials and the continuing miniaturization of mechanical devices or systems. To facilitate the manufacturing and applications of nanoscale materials, it is vital to understand their mechanical properties. There are have been extensive experimental, theoretical, and computational efforts at atomistic scale to understand the mechanical behaviours of nanomaterials. Particularly, for the novel structures with extreme small dimensions like the ultra-thin diamond nanothread[1] and two-dimensional diamond - diamane,[2] the atomic simulations have provided useful guidelines for the experimental study. Besides the mechanical properties, the thermal transport of the nanomaterials is another fundamental characteristic that determine their usages.[3] Depending on the application, materials are required to have a high thermal conductivity or a strongly suppressed thermal conductivity. For instance, for energy saving in both residential and commercial buildings and thermoelectric devices, there has been a continuing search for high performance materials with a low thermal conductivity. In comparison, a high thermal conductivity is required for the electronic packing to enable efficient heat removal and transfer.
The diversity of low dimensional nanomaterials has provided a great potential to construct novel nanostructures with required mechanical and thermal performance. This mini-symposium intends to bring the recent progress on atomistic simulations for the mechanical and thermal transport properties of nanomaterials, which serve as effective tools to guide experiments, predict novel nanomaterials, and exploit novel applications.[4]
REFERENCES
[1] Zhan, H.; Zhang, G.; Tan, V. B. C.; Gu, Y., The best features of diamond nanothread for nanofibre applications. Nature Communications 2017, 8, 14863.
[2] Zheng, Z.; Zhan, H.; Nie, Y.; Xu, X.; Qi, D.; Gu, Y., Single layer diamond - A new ultrathin 2D carbon nanostructure for mechanical resonator. Carbon 2020, 161, 809-815.
[3] Zhan, H.; Nie, Y.; Chen, Y.; Bell, J. M.; Gu, Y., Thermal transport in 3D nanostructures. Adv. Funct. Mater. 2019, 30, 1903841.
[4] Zhan, H.; Zhang, G.; Bell, J. M.; Tan, V. B. C.; Gu, Y., High density mechanical energy storage with carbon nanothread bundle. Nature Communications 2020, 11 (1), 1905.