Authors: Boqian Sun, Daming Chen, Yuan Cheng, Weidong Fei, Danyu Jiang, Sufang Tang, Guangdong Zhao, Juntao Song, Chenlin Hou, Wenzheng Zhang, Shiqi Wu, Yu Yang, Mingyi Tan, Jie Zhang, Daqing Wei, Chaowei Guo, Wei Zhang, Shun Dong, Shanyi Du, Jiecai Han, Jian Luo, Xinghong Zhang
Published: 2022-06-10
Source: Full article
AbstractObtaining large plastic deformation in polycrystalline van der Waals (vdW) materials is challenging. Achieving such deformation is especially difficult in graphite because it is highly anisotropic. The development of sugar‐derived isotropic nanostructured polycrystalline graphite (SINPG) is discussed herein. The structure of this material preserves the high in‐plane rigidity and out‐of‐plane flexibility of graphene layers and enables prominent plasticity by activating the rotation of nanoscale (5–10 nm) grains. Thus, micrometer‐sized SINPG samples demonstrate enhanced compressive strengths of up to 3.0 GPa and plastic strains of 30–50%. These findings suggest a new pathway for enabling plastic deformation in otherwise brittle vdW materials. This new class of nanostructured carbon materials is suitable for use in a broad range of fields, from semiconductor to aerospace applications.