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Title: The effect of intrinsic crumpling on the mechanics of free-standing graphene

Abstract

Free-standing graphene is inherently crumpled in the out-of-plane direction due to dynamic flexural phonons and static wrinkling. We explore the consequences of this crumpling on the effective mechanical constants of graphene.We develop a sensitive experimental approach to probe stretching of graphene membranes under low applied stress at cryogenic to room temperatures. We find that the in-plane stiffness of graphene is 20 100Nm–1 at room temperature, much smaller than 340Nm–1 (the value expected for flat graphene). Moreover, while the in-plane stiffness only increases moderately when the devices are cooled down to 10 K, it approaches 300Nm–1 when the aspect ratio of graphene membranes is increased. These results indicate that softening of graphene at temperatures o400 K is caused by static wrinkling, with only a small contribution due to flexural phonons. Overall, these results explain the large variation in reported mechanical constants of graphene devices and pave the way towards controlling their mechanical properties.

Authors:
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [2];  [1];  [1]; ORCiD logo [1];  [3]
  1. Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, TN (United States)
  2. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  3. Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, TN (United States); Freie Univ. Berlin, Berlin (Germany)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS); Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
OSTI Identifier:
1327762
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1259684; OSTI ID: 1597705
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC05-00OR22725; FG02-09ER46554; NSF CAREER 4-20-632-3391; HDTRA1-15-1-0036
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Nature Communications
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 6; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher:
Nature Publishing Group
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE

Citation Formats

Nicholl, Ryan J. T., Conley, Hiram J., Lavrik, Nickolay V., Vlassiouk, Ivan, Puzyrev, Yevgeniy S., Sreenivas, Vijayashree Parsi, Pantelides, Sokrates T., and Bolotin, Kirill I. The effect of intrinsic crumpling on the mechanics of free-standing graphene. United States: N. p., 2015. Web. doi:10.1038/ncomms9789.
Nicholl, Ryan J. T., Conley, Hiram J., Lavrik, Nickolay V., Vlassiouk, Ivan, Puzyrev, Yevgeniy S., Sreenivas, Vijayashree Parsi, Pantelides, Sokrates T., & Bolotin, Kirill I. The effect of intrinsic crumpling on the mechanics of free-standing graphene. United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9789
Nicholl, Ryan J. T., Conley, Hiram J., Lavrik, Nickolay V., Vlassiouk, Ivan, Puzyrev, Yevgeniy S., Sreenivas, Vijayashree Parsi, Pantelides, Sokrates T., and Bolotin, Kirill I. Fri . "The effect of intrinsic crumpling on the mechanics of free-standing graphene". United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9789. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1327762.
@article{osti_1327762,
title = {The effect of intrinsic crumpling on the mechanics of free-standing graphene},
author = {Nicholl, Ryan J. T. and Conley, Hiram J. and Lavrik, Nickolay V. and Vlassiouk, Ivan and Puzyrev, Yevgeniy S. and Sreenivas, Vijayashree Parsi and Pantelides, Sokrates T. and Bolotin, Kirill I.},
abstractNote = {Free-standing graphene is inherently crumpled in the out-of-plane direction due to dynamic flexural phonons and static wrinkling. We explore the consequences of this crumpling on the effective mechanical constants of graphene.We develop a sensitive experimental approach to probe stretching of graphene membranes under low applied stress at cryogenic to room temperatures. We find that the in-plane stiffness of graphene is 20 100Nm–1 at room temperature, much smaller than 340Nm–1 (the value expected for flat graphene). Moreover, while the in-plane stiffness only increases moderately when the devices are cooled down to 10 K, it approaches 300Nm–1 when the aspect ratio of graphene membranes is increased. These results indicate that softening of graphene at temperatures o400 K is caused by static wrinkling, with only a small contribution due to flexural phonons. Overall, these results explain the large variation in reported mechanical constants of graphene devices and pave the way towards controlling their mechanical properties.},
doi = {10.1038/ncomms9789},
journal = {Nature Communications},
number = 1,
volume = 6,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Nov 06 00:00:00 EST 2015},
month = {Fri Nov 06 00:00:00 EST 2015}
}

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