Abstract
In both research and industry, materials will be exposed to stresses,
be it during fabrication, normal use, or mechanical failure. The response
to external stress will have important impact on properties, specially when
atomic details govern the functionalities of the materials. This review aims at
summarizing current research involving the responses of graphene and graphene
materials to applied stress at the nanoscale, and to categorize them by stressstrain
behavior. In particular, we consider the reversible functionalization of
graphene and graphene materials by way of elastic deformation and strain
engineering, the plastic deformation of graphene oxide and the emergence of such
in normally-brittle graphene, the formation of defects as a response to stress under
high temperature annealing or irradiation conditions, and the properties that
a ect how, and mechanisms by which, pristine, defective, and polycrystalline
graphene fail catastrophically during fracture. Overall we nd that there is
signi cant potential for the use of existing knowledge, especially that of strain
engineering, as well as potential for additional research into the fracture mechanics
of polycrystalline graphene and device functionalization by way of controllable
plastic deformation of graphene.
