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Toughness and strength of nanocrystalline graphene

Pristine monocrystalline graphene is claimed to be the strongest material known with remarkable mechanical and electrical properties. However, graphene made with scalable fabrication techniques is polycrystalline and contains inherent nanoscale line and point defects—grain boundaries and grain-bound...

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Autores principales: Shekhawat, Ashivni, Ritchie, Robert O.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4738364/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26817712
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10546
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author Shekhawat, Ashivni
Ritchie, Robert O.
author_facet Shekhawat, Ashivni
Ritchie, Robert O.
author_sort Shekhawat, Ashivni
collection PubMed
description Pristine monocrystalline graphene is claimed to be the strongest material known with remarkable mechanical and electrical properties. However, graphene made with scalable fabrication techniques is polycrystalline and contains inherent nanoscale line and point defects—grain boundaries and grain-boundary triple junctions—that lead to significant statistical fluctuations in toughness and strength. These fluctuations become particularly pronounced for nanocrystalline graphene where the density of defects is high. Here we use large-scale simulation and continuum modelling to show that the statistical variation in toughness and strength can be understood with ‘weakest-link' statistics. We develop the first statistical theory of toughness in polycrystalline graphene, and elucidate the nanoscale origins of the grain-size dependence of its strength and toughness. Our results should lead to more reliable graphene device design, and provide a framework to interpret experimental results in a broad class of two-dimensional materials.
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spelling pubmed-47383642016-03-04 Toughness and strength of nanocrystalline graphene Shekhawat, Ashivni Ritchie, Robert O. Nat Commun Article Pristine monocrystalline graphene is claimed to be the strongest material known with remarkable mechanical and electrical properties. However, graphene made with scalable fabrication techniques is polycrystalline and contains inherent nanoscale line and point defects—grain boundaries and grain-boundary triple junctions—that lead to significant statistical fluctuations in toughness and strength. These fluctuations become particularly pronounced for nanocrystalline graphene where the density of defects is high. Here we use large-scale simulation and continuum modelling to show that the statistical variation in toughness and strength can be understood with ‘weakest-link' statistics. We develop the first statistical theory of toughness in polycrystalline graphene, and elucidate the nanoscale origins of the grain-size dependence of its strength and toughness. Our results should lead to more reliable graphene device design, and provide a framework to interpret experimental results in a broad class of two-dimensional materials. Nature Publishing Group 2016-01-28 /pmc/articles/PMC4738364/ /pubmed/26817712 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10546 Text en Copyright © 2015, Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Shekhawat, Ashivni
Ritchie, Robert O.
Toughness and strength of nanocrystalline graphene
title Toughness and strength of nanocrystalline graphene
title_full Toughness and strength of nanocrystalline graphene
title_fullStr Toughness and strength of nanocrystalline graphene
title_full_unstemmed Toughness and strength of nanocrystalline graphene
title_short Toughness and strength of nanocrystalline graphene
title_sort toughness and strength of nanocrystalline graphene
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4738364/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26817712
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10546
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