{"id":15749,"date":"2018-08-03T08:13:55","date_gmt":"2018-08-03T08:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=15749"},"modified":"2020-06-09T12:54:11","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T12:54:11","slug":"scientists-test-material-that-shows-promise-for-flexible-electronics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/scientists-test-material-that-shows-promise-for-flexible-electronics\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists test material that shows promise for flexible electronics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"HOUSTON \u2013 Rice University researchers have found that fracture-resistant “rebar graphene” is more than twice as tough as pristine\u00a0graphene.<\/span><\/p>\n

Graphene\u00a0is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon. On the two-dimensional scale, the material is stronger than steel, but\u00a0because graphene is so thin, it is still subject to ripping and tearing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rebar graphene is the nanoscale analog of\u00a0rebar\u00a0(reinforcement bars) in concrete, in which embedded steel bars enhance the material’s strength and durability.\u00a0Rebar graphene, developed by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour in 2014, uses\u00a0carbon nanotubes\u00a0for reinforcement.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a new study in the American Chemical Society journal\u00a0ACS Nano, Rice materials scientist Jun Lou, graduate student and lead author Emily Hacopian and collaborators, including Tour, stress-tested rebar graphene and found that nanotube rebar diverted and bridged cracks that would otherwise propagate in unreinforced graphene.<\/span><\/p>\n

The experiments showed that nanotubes help graphene stay stretchy and also reduce the effects of cracks. That could be useful not only for flexible electronics but also electrically active wearables or other devices where stress tolerance, flexibility, transparency and mechanical stability are desired, Lou said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both the lab’s mechanical tests and\u00a0molecular dynamics\u00a0simulations by collaborators at Brown University revealed the material’s toughness.<\/span><\/p>\n

Graphene’s excellent conductivity makes it a strong candidate for devices, but its brittle nature is a downside, Lou said. His lab reported two years ago that\u00a0graphene is only as strong as its weakest link. Those tests showed the strength of pristine graphene to be “substantially lower” than its reported intrinsic strength. In a\u00a0later study, the lab found\u00a0molybdenum diselenide, another two-dimensional material of interest to researchers, is also brittle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tour approached Lou and his group to carry out similar tests on rebar graphene, made by spin-coating single-walled nanotubes onto a copper substrate and growing graphene atop them via\u00a0chemical vapor deposition.<\/span><\/p>\n

To stress-test rebar graphene, Hacopian, Yang and colleagues had to pull it to pieces and measure the force that was applied. Through trial and error, the lab developed a way to cut microscopic pieces of the material and mount it on a testbed for use with scanning electron and transmission electron microscopes.<\/span><\/p>\n

“We couldn’t use glue, so we had to understand the intermolecular forces between the material and our testing devices,” Hacopian said. “With materials this fragile, it’s really difficult.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Rebar didn’t keep graphene from ultimate failure, but the nanotubes slowed the process by forcing cracks to zig and zag as they propagated. When the force was too weak to completely break the graphene, nanotubes effectively bridged cracks and in some cases preserved the material’s conductivity.<\/span><\/p>\n

In earlier tests, Lou’s lab showed graphene has a native fracture toughness of 4\u00a0megapascals. In contrast, rebar graphene has an average toughness of 10.7 megapascals, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Simulations by study co-author\u00a0Huajian Gao\u00a0and his team at Brown confirmed results from the physical experiments. Gao’s team found the same effects in simulations with orderly rows of rebar in graphene as those measured in the physical samples with rebar pointing every which way.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The simulations are important because they let us see the process on a time scale that isn’t available to us with microscopy techniques, which only give us snapshots,” Lou said. “The Brown team really helped us understand what’s happening behind the numbers.”<\/span><\/p>\n

He said the rebar graphene results are a first step toward the characterization of many new materials. “We hope this opens a direction people can pursue to engineer 2D material features for applications,” Lou said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hacopian, Yingchao Yang of the University of Maine and Bo Ni of Brown University are co-lead authors of the paper. Co-authors are Yilun Li, Hua Guo of Rice, Xing Li of Rice and Zhengzhou University and Qing Chen of Peking University. Lou is a professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice. Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry and a professor of computer science and of materials science and nanoengineering Rice. Gao is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Engineering at Brown.<\/span><\/p>\n

The research was supported by the Welch Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research’s Multidisciplinary University Research Institute, the Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Science Foundation.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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