Irreversible crumpling of graphene from hydrostatic and biaxial compression.

We perform molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the irreversibility of crumpled graphene obtained by hydrostatic or biaxial compression. Our results show that there is a critical degree of crumpling, above which the crumpling is irreversible after the external force is removed. The critical degree of irreversible crumpling is closely related to the self-adhesion phenomenon of graphene, which leads to a step-like jump or decrease in the adhesion energy. We find the critical degree of crumpling is about 0.5 or 0.55 for hydrostatic or biaxial compression, which matches analytic predictions based on a competition between adhesive and bending energies in folded graphene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]