Enhancing Graphene-derived Materials through Multimodal and Self-healable Interfaces

TL;DR

This paper investigates how multimodal and self-healable crosslinks in layered graphene-derived materials improve their mechanical strength and toughness, offering insights for designing high-performance nanosheet-based macroscopic materials.

Contribution

It introduces a layered structure with multiple crosslinking mechanisms, demonstrating their combined effect on enhancing mechanical properties.

Findings

Synergistic enhancement of strength and toughness.

Layered structure with multimodal crosslinks improves load transfer.

Self-healable interfaces contribute to durability.

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that graphene-derived materials not only feature outstandingly multifunctional properties, but also act as model materials to implant nanoscale structural engineering insights into their macroscopic performance optimization. Functionalizing the interfaces between graphene sheets by interlayer crosslinks has been proven to be an effective route to tune the mechanical properties. Here we explore the graphene-derived material with a layer-by-layer structure and multiple crosslinking mechanisms. The effects of multimodal and self-healable crosslinks are assessed in terms of interlayer loading transfer capability. The results show that the brick-and-motar hierarchy and synergetic effects from different crosslinks enable synergetic enhancement in the strength and toughness. The findings here could shed light on the development of high-performance paper-, fiber- or film-like macroscopic materials from monolayer nanosheets with nanoengineerable interfaces.