Bioinspired, graphene-enabled Ni composites with high strength and toughness

Abstract

Nature’s wisdom resides in achieving a joint enhancement of strength and toughness by constructing intelligent, hierarchical architectures from extremely limited resources. A representative example is nacre, in which a brick-and-mortar structure enables a confluence of toughening mechanisms on multiple length scales. The result is an outstanding combination of strength and toughness which is hardly achieved by engineering materials. Here, a bioinspired Ni/Ni3C composite with nacre-like, brick-and-mortar structure was constructed from Ni powders and graphene sheets. This composite achieved a 73% increase in strength with only a 28% compromise on ductility, leading to a notable improvement in toughness. The graphene-derived Ni-Ti-Al/Ni3C composite retained high hardness up to 1000°C. The present study unveiled a method to smartly use 2D materials to fabricate high-performance metal matrix composites with brick-and-mortar structure through interfacial reactions and, furthermore, created an opportunity of developing advanced Ni-C–based alloys for high-temperature environments.

Nature‐Inspired Nacre‐Like Composites Combining Human Tooth‐Matching Elasticity and Hardness with Exceptional Damage Tolerance

“…Additionally, despite the implementation of bioinspired designs in mineral-organic composites for structural applications, nacre-like lamellar and brick-and-mortar architectures have rarely been realized in biomedical systems, specifically for dental applications. [39,[42][43][44][54][55][56][57][58] Here we clarify the architectural design principles of the current composites composed of 3Y-TZP and dental resin in generating their tooth-matching stiffness. The lamellar composites, although having a parallel arrangement of constituents, display a Young's modulus lower than that predicted by the rule-of-mixtures following the Voigt model.…”

Research on the interface properties and strengthening–toughening mechanism of nanocarbon-toughened ceramic matrix composites

“…Wu et al prepare a multi-layered structure with a micron-sized length at the grain boundary of ZrB 2 called a grapheme nanoribbon (GNR). The GNR may be formed by the chain-breaking and collapse of MWCNT under the influence of residual stress or during the grain growth, and it deflects cracks into a tortuous path, which extends the crack length and reduces the stress concentration to consume the fracture energy [43,77]. Graphene has self-lubricating properties.…”

Temperature-Dependent Mechanical Properties of Graphene/Cu Nanocomposites with In-Plane Negative Poisson’s Ratios

“…In most experimental reports, the graphene used to reinforce metal matrix composites (MMCs) is mainly multilayered graphene (MLG) or graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) which contain 10-100 layers of carbon atoms. It is noted that the material properties of these multilayer gra-phene derivatives are far less superior to those of the singlelayer graphene counterpart [14]. It was also observed [15] that increasing the number of graphene layers may degrade the mechanical and other properties of these MMCs.…”

“…Graphene is an ideal reinforcement agent for highperformance composites due to its superb mechanical and physicochemical properties [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Recently, polymer-and metal-based composites [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] reinforced by graphene have gained tremendous attention from the scientific community. Compared with polymer-based composites, composites with metal matrix can provide higher stiffness and strength and service under a higher temperature, which makes them have the potential for more critical applications in industry, especially in the aerospace and automobile industry.…”

“…Compared with polymer-based composites, composites with metal matrix can provide higher stiffness and strength and service under a higher temperature, which makes them have the potential for more critical applications in industry, especially in the aerospace and automobile industry. Several researchers have reported in recent years [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] on experimental and numerical studies of graphene-reinforced metal composites. The numerical studies [16][17][18][19][20][21] mainly based on the method of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations indicated that the material properties of metal composites can be significantly improved by applying single-layer graphene reinforcement.…”