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HOUSTON -- Research from Rice University and the University of California at Berkeley may give science and industry a new way to manipulate graphene, the wonder material expected to play a role in advanced electronic, mechanical and thermal applications.
When graphene a one-atom thick sheet of carbon rips under stress, it does so in a unique way that puzzled scientists who first observed the phenomenon. Instead of tearing randomly like a piece of paper would, it seeks the path of least resistance and creates new edges that give the material desirable qualities.
Because graphene's edges determine its electrical properties, finding a way to control them will be significant, said Boris Yakobson, Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and professor of chemistry.
It's rare that Yakobson's work as a theoretical physicist appears in the same paper with experimental evidence, but the recent submission in Nano Letters titled "Ripping Graphene: Preferred Directions" is a notable exception, he said.
Yakobson and Vasilii Artyukhov, a postdoctoral researcher at Rice, recreated in computer simulations the kind of ripping observed through an electron microscope by researchers at Berkeley.
The California team noticed that cracks in flakes of graphene followed armchair or zigzag configurations, terms that refer to the shape of the edges created. It seemed that molecular forces were dictating how graphene handles stress.
Those forces are robust. Carbon-carbon bonds are the strongest known to man. But the importance of this research, Yakobson said, lies in the nature of the edge that results from the rip. The edge of a sheet of graphene gives it particular qualities, especially in the way it handles electric current. Graphene is so conductive that current flows straight through without impediment until it reaches the edge. What the current finds there makes a big differenc
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| Contact: Mike Williams mikewilliams@rice.edu 713-248-6728 Rice University Source:Eurekalert |
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