You might have already Graphene and its miracle property but are you wondering how strong it actually is? If so then Bingo , you have just hit the Jackpot.
Graphene, a material consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms, has been touted as the strongest material known to exist, 200 times stronger than steel. Yes, you got it correct. It has been noted that a perfect graphene can withstand about 100 Gigapascals (14 million pounds per square inch) of force before it breaks.
So can it get any stronger? And the answer is Yes. Graphene being remarkably thin, it’s strong enough to protect from a bullet. Scientists found that by arranging two layers of Graphene together, it becomes durable enough to handle impact at room temperature. They’ve named the new material “Diamene.”
“This is the thinnest film with the stiffness and hardness of diamond ever created,” study author Elissa Riedo, a physics professor at The City University of New York (CUNY), said in a statement. “Previously, when we tested graphite or a single atomic layer of graphene, we would apply pressure and feel a very soft film. But when the graphite film was exactly two-layers thick, all of a sudden we realized that the material under pressure was becoming extremely hard and as stiff, or stiffer, than bulk diamond.”
This all being said, Graphene is not as tough as we would have liked it to be. It can crack very easily. A team of scientists from Rice University and the Georgia Institute of Technology did research to find it’s fracture toughness and it has been found that Graphene has relatively low fracture toughness which implies that it takes only a small crack in a piece of graphene to break it but small cracks are natural consequences while producing Graphene is bulks.