Enhancement Of Fracture Toughness Through Atomic Scale...

Enhancement of Fracture Toughness through Atomic Scale Crack Bridging in Graphene with Stone-Thrower-Wales Defects G. Rajasekaran and Avinash Parashar Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee - 247667, India ABSTRACT Keywords: graphene, defect engineering, Stone-Thrower-Wales defect, crack bridging, stress intensity factor, fracture toughness. 1. Introduction Graphene is a hexagonal two-dimensional (2D) monolayer of honeycomb lattice packed carbon structure that was discovered and successfully isolated from bulk graphite just a few years ago [1]. It is a promising candidate in a number of mechanical, thermal and electrical applications [2-6], owing to its outstanding physical properties [2]. In addition to enormous nano-technological applications, graphene also attracts prodigious attention as strengthening element in composites [7-10]. Characterization of the mechanical properties of graphene is essential both from a technological perspective for its reliable applications and from a fundamental interest to understanding its deformation physics [11-13]. In material science, fracture toughness is a property that describes the ability of a material containing a crack to resist fracture, and is one of the most important mechanical properties of any material [14-15]. The useful strength of large area graphene with engineering relevance is usu ally determined by its fracture toughness, rather than the intrinsic strength