Elastic straining of free-standing monolayer graphene

Abstract

The sp 2 nature of graphene endows the hexagonal lattice with very high theoretical stiffness, strength and resilience, all well-documented. However, the ultimate stretchability of graphene has not yet been demonstrated due to the difficulties in experimental design. Here, directly performing in situ tensile tests in a scanning electron microscope after developing a protocol for sample transfer, shaping and straining, we report the elastic properties and stretchability of free-standing single-crystalline monolayer graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition. The measured Young's modulus is close to 1 TPa, aligning well with the theoretical value, while the representative engineering tensile strength reaches~50-60 GPa with sample-wide elastic strain up to~6%. Our findings demonstrate that single-crystalline monolayer graphene can indeed display near ideal mechanical performance, even in a large area with edge defects, as well as resilience and mechanical robustness that allows for flexible electronics and mechatronics applications.

On Symmetry Properties of The Corrugated Graphene System

“…For example, the DFT and molecular dynamics simulations predict that it can be stretched up to about 20-30%, without being damaged [1]. The experimental measurements demonstrate a good agreement with the theoretical estimations, while the robust engineering results indicate on sample-wide elastic strain ∼6% [2]. Evidently, transforming the flat surface to the curved one, one creates the strain that affects the graphene properties.…”

Ion transport across solid-state ion channels perturbed by directed strain

“…Therefore, without doubt, it will be challenging to experimentally verify our predictions, both in terms of membrane fabrication and precise application of strains. Nonetheless, recent advances in fabrication [15,16] and strain actuation at the nanoscale [20,33] suggest that rapid progress is being made toward the possibility of experimentally exploring strain-gated nanofluidic systems.…”

“…Uniaxial in-plane tensile strains are applied to the membrane as described earlier [10] and in the SI. Strain magnitudes are varied up to 0.04, well within graphene's experimentally observed limits of elasticity [20]. Figure 1.…”

Graphene-Coated Nanowire Waveguides and Their Applications

“…Further, the relative equivalent complex permittivity of graphene can be calculated by using ε g = 1 + jσ g /(ε 0 ωd) [12], where d = 0.335 nm is the thickness of monolayer graphene [38,39]. Within the random-phase approximation, the dynamic optical response of graphene can be derived from the Kubo's formula consisting of the interband and intraband contributions in the infrared ranges, that is σ g = σ intra + σ inter , and the surface conductivity of graphene is given as [40]:…”