Comments on `Irreversibility in Response to Forces Acting on Graphene Sheets'

Abstract

In the letter "Phys. Rev. Lett 104, 196804 (2010)" the compression-relaxation mechanism (CRM) for a graphene sheet (GS) was reported to be irreversible and resulted in static ripples on GS, such that for T <Tc the free-energy of the rippled GS is smaller than that of roughened GS. We will point out several technical difficulties, such as the use of the relation Delta A=<W> for the free energy calculations and the definition of the rough state, with their simulations. We show that (at T <Tc) their introduced rough state suffer boundary stress, thus is a rippled state and their obtained inequality A_{ripple}<A_{rough} is no longer valid. Therefore the introduced mechanism is reversible. Furthermore, from theoretical point of view for an infinitely slow rate of CRM, the relation Delta A=<W> (in common non-equilibrium simulations) is allowed. In this case authors of Ref. [1] must report the used infinitely small rate and justify how it is in practice valid. We show Delta A <> <W> for the system that was used in [1].