graphene oxide

Materials can suffer mechanical fatigue when subjected to cyclic loading at stress levels much lower than the ultimate tensile strength, and understanding this behaviour is critical to evaluating long-term dynamic reliability. The fatigue life and damage mechanisms of two-dimensional (2D) materials, of interest for mechanical and electronic applications, are currently unknown. Here, we present a fatigue study of freestanding 2D materials, specifically graphene and graphene oxide (GO).

In an article published in the August 20 issue of Nature Communications, we report a mechanochemical phenomenon in graphene oxide membranes, covalent epoxide-to-ether functional group transformations that deviate from epoxide ring-opening reactions, discovered through nanomechanical experiments and density functional-based tight binding calculations.