Mechanical properties of irradiated single-layer graphene

C Carpenter and D Maroudas and A Ramasubramaniam, APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS, 103, 013102 (2013).

DOI: 10.1063/1.4813010

The mechanical properties of irradiated single-layer graphene sheets are determined as a function of inserted vacancy concentration. We find that the vacancy-induced crystalline-to-amorphous transition is accompanied by a brittle-to-ductile transition in the failure response of irradiated graphene sheets for inserted vacancy concentrations of 8%-12%. While point defects and larger voids appreciably degrade the strength of pristine graphene, we find that even heavily damaged samples (similar to 20% vacancies) exhibit tensile strengths of similar to 30 GPa, in significant excess of those typical of engineering materials. Our results suggest that defect engineering of graphene is feasible without incurring a complete loss of its desirable mechanical properties. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

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