An MD-based systematic study on the mechanical characteristics of a novel hybrid CNT/graphene drug carrier

This paper is aimed to assess the mechanical properties of a hybrid graphene-carbon nanotube carrier embedded with doxorubicin (DOX). Utilizing molecular dynamics simulation, the results reveal that by increasing the temperature from 309 to 313 K, the elastic modulus of the GS/CNT/DOX carrier decreases from 0.8 to 0.74 TPa. Also, it is shown that the presence of chitosan molecules enhances the mechanical characteristics of the proposed nanocarrier. Taking the chirality of the graphene sheet into account, the results indicate that by increasing the size of the graphene sheet, the failure stress is slightly increased for the armchair type. However, this value decreases as the size of the zigzag sample increases. Additionally, the influence of aspect ratio on the elastic modulus, fracture stress, and fracture strain of these systems is systematically examined. It has been shown that the failure stress may change significantly with increasing this parameter, especially for carrier systems having zigzag carbon nanostructures. Moreover considering various voids content in the CNT structure, the weakening effect of defects is systematically explored. Also, the dependence of the mechanical features of the proposed hybrid carrier on the presence of DOX molecules is studied via MD simulations. Finally, we have investigated the role of CNT physical characteristics including its size and chirality on the results. Graphical abstract.