Georgia Tech News Center

Researchers at Rice University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have measured the fracture toughness of imperfect graphene for the first time and found it to be somewhat brittle. The researchers concluded that graphene is really only as strong as its weakest link, which they determined to be "substantially lower" than the intrinsic strength of graphene. "Graphene has exceptional physical properties, but to use it in real applications we have to understand the useful strength of large-area graphene, which is controlled by the fracture toughness," says Georgia Tech professor Ting Zhu. Imperfections in graphene significantly lessen its strength, with an upper limit of about 100 gigapascals for perfect graphene previously measured by nanoindentation, according to the researchers.  To read further, please visit http://www.news.gatech.edu/2014/04/29/strong-its-weakest-link-experiments-determine-real-world-limits-graphene.