Molecular Dynamics Simulation: the Effect of Graphene on the Mechanical Properties of Epoxy Based Photoresist: SU8

SU8 is an epoxy-Novolac resin, which is used as photo initiator in micro- and nano- fabrication techniques. From literature, graphene has been proved that results in significant improvement in the properties of the composites. However, due to nanometer size of the graphene layers there is no any experimental tool to obtain insight of the fillers inside the resin especially when the materials are under mechanical deformations where simulation techniques work well. Therefore, SU8 and SU8-graphene nanocomposites as the model compounds were taken to be investigated from atomistic molecular dynamic approach to demonstrate the effect of graphene layers. This leads to mechanical property enhancement such as Young’s, bulk and shear modules being affected by the aspect ratio of the graphene layers high aspect ratio graphene in SU8 leads to an 81% improvement in Young’s, 100% in bulk and 83% in shear moduli in addition to higher density and less graphene wrinkling.