Graphene, a material consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms, has been touted as the strongest material known to exist, 200 times stronger than steel, lighter than paper, and with extraordinary mechanical and electrical properties. But can it live up to its promise?
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed the first known statistical theory for the toughness of polycrystalline graphene, which is made with chemical vapor deposition, and found that it is indeed strong (albeit not quite as strong as pristine monocrystalline graphene), but more importantly, its toughness—or resistance to fracture—is quite low. Their study, "Toughness and strength of nanocyrstalline graphene," was published recently in Nature Communications.
"This material certainly has very high strength, but it has particularly low toughness—lower than diamond and a little higher than pure graphite," said Berkeley Lab scientist Robert Ritchie. "Its extremely high strength is very impressive, but we can't necessarily utilize that strength unless it has resistance to fracture."
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