Giant Stress Transfer in Polymer-Graphene Oxide Nanocomposites Measured at the Level of Individual, Single-layer Sheets

摘要

Graphene oxide (GO) sheets can be made cheaply and in a scalable way, have outstanding processing properties and a Young's modulus of about 200 GPa. They have thus great potential as toughening and strengthening nanofillers in structural polymer nano-composites. However, many properties of these materials systems are presently not well understood. For instance, the strength and the strain at break of GO have not yet been determined. It is also not clear to what extent stress is transferred between the polymer matrix and sheets in these nanocomposites. Hence, the performance limiting factors in these nanocomposites are not known.