Experiments reveal strength of rebar graphene

Graphene has many favourable properties but the so-called wonder material is brittle, which has led to efforts to reinforce it with carbon nanotubes.

Now, researchers at Rice University in Texas have found that fracture-resistant "rebar graphene" - developed by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour in 2014 - is more than twice as tough as pristine graphene.

On the two-dimensional scale, graphene is stronger than steel, but because graphene is so thin, it is subject to ripping and tearing.

In a new study published in ACS 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.