Plasticity and ductility in graphene oxide through a mechanochemically induced damage tolerance mechanism.
The ability to bias chemical reaction pathways is a fundamental goal for chemists and material scientists to produce innovative materials. Recently, two-dimensional materials have emerged as potential platforms for exploring novel mechanically activated chemical reactions. Here we report a mechanochemical phenomenon in graphene oxide membranes, covalent epoxide-to-ether functional group transformations that deviate from epoxide ring-opening reactions, discovered through nanomechanical experiments and density functional-based tight binding calculations. These mechanochemical transformations in a two-dimensional system are directionally dependent, and confer pronounced plasticity and damage tolerance to graphene oxide monolayers. Additional experiments on chemically modified graphene oxide membranes, with ring-opened epoxide groups, verify this unique deformation mechanism. These studies establish graphene oxide as a two-dimensional building block with highly tuneable mechanical properties for the design of high-performance nanocomposites, and stimulate the discovery of new bond-selective chemical transformations in two-dimensional materials.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA.|Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Program, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA.
Xiaoding
X
Wei
Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA.
Lily
L
Mao
Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Program, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA.
Rafael A
RA
Soler-Crespo
Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA.|Department of Chemistry, University of Victoria, British Columbia, V8W 3V6, Canada.
Jeffrey T
JT
Paci
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 60208, USA.
Jiaxing
J
Huang
Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA.
SonBinh T
ST
Nguyen
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA.|Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Program, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA.
Horacio D
HD
Espinosa