Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Exceptionally strong and robust millimeter-scale graphene–alumina composite membranes

Graphene has attracted attention as a potential strengthening material and functional component in suspended membranes as utilized in micro and nanosystems. Development of a practical and scalable fabrication process is a necessary step to allow the exceptional material properties of graphene to be fully exploited in composite structures. Using standard and scalable microfabrication processes, we fabricated free-standing chemical vapor deposition monolayer graphene-reinforced Al 2 O 3 composite membranes, 0.5 mm in diameter, that are strong and robust. Bulge tests revealed that the graphene reinforcement increased the membrane fracture strength by a factor of at least three and maximum sustainable strain from 0.28% to at least 0.69%. We show that the graphene-reinforced membranes are even tolerant to significant cracking without loss of membrane integrity. The graphene composite membranes’ freestanding area of ∼200 000 μ m 2 is almost a thousand...

Maria Berdova, Alexander Pyymaki Perros, Wonjae Kim, Juha Riikonen, Tuomo Ylitalo, Jouni Heino, Changfeng Li, Ivan Kassamakov, Edward Hæggström, Harri Lipsanen and Sami Franssila

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