Insights into Impact Interaction between Graphene and High-Speed Atomic Oxygen for Aerospace Protection Application

Graphene has great potential in aerospace applications but is inevitably influenced by the high-speed atomic oxygen (AO) impact on low earth orbit. So far, the understanding of the impact interaction between AO and graphene as well as the protection mechanisms in the literature are still inconsistent and obscure, jeopardizing the practical application of graphene in this field. Herein, by using first-principles calculation combined with experiments, we explored the interaction process of high-speed AO impacting multiple sites of graphene with various incident angles based on actual aerospace conditions. The ab-initio molecular dynamics simulations show that the high-speed AO will either be rebounded or adsorbed by graphene, which is strongly correlated to the bonding condition of AO on graphene. Therefore, scattering or trapping AO are two potential protection mechanisms on graphene. Moreover, the experimental results show that the scattering AO strategy is a better protection method than trapping AO on the graphene surface . To achieve higher probability of scattering, it is desired that graphene directly, rather than obliquely, faces to vertical AO impact. These findings revealed useful insights into the interaction mechanisms between AO and graphene and provide a guide for using graphene as an AO impact-resistant material in aerospace applications