Investigation of effects of swift heavy ion irradiation on few-layer graphene: A molecular dynamics simulation study

[Display omitted] •Process structure of SHI irradiation damage in FLG are studied.•Effect of stacking on structural damage is analysed with a fixed θ of incident ion.•Damage of the two surface layers is not significantly affected.•Dynamic process of damage generation is constructed with atomic images. The molecular dynamics simulation has been utilized to investigate the structural damage via heavy ion irradiation in graphene. The effects of stacking and incident angle of ion on the structural damage are mainly explored. The growth of stacking layers makes structural damage of overall and surface layer more and more serious. The damage of each layer shows obvious differences, the damage becomes weaker toward the centre. The effect of incident angle on damage is discussed in 3-layer graphene. The two surface layers are not affected while the damage of intermediate layer is weak with the decrease of incident angle. The driving force for structural damage is the stress wave propagating from the energy deposition region to the surrounding.