Anti-fatigue nanomechanics in the pre-cracked graphene–copper artificial nacre under cyclic tension

Abstract

The fatigue performance of pre-cracked graphene–copper artificial nacre (GrCu nacre) under cyclic tensile loading is investigated using theoretical analysis and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Mechanical models are proposed to describe the fatigue performance of GrCu nacre, which agree well with MD simulations. Compared with nanocomposites consisting of large graphene sheets, graphene fragments cannot improve the ultimate strength of GrCu nacre, but significantly improve its fatigue limit. This anti-fatigue effect is dominated by the graphene–copper interfaces with van der Waals interactions, which can be adjusted by tailoring the architectural parameters of GrCu nacre. The ultimate strength of GrCu nacre decreases as the volume fraction of graphene increases. The fatigue limit of GrCu nacre decreases as the length of graphene fragments increases, and can be approximately described by a quadratic function of interlayer repeat spacing. An anomalous weakening effect occurs when the in-plane distance between graphene fragments is less than 2 nm, while this effect can be ignored when it is higher than 2 nm. The fatigue ratio of common metals is ∼0.4, whereas that of GrCu nacre is generally higher than 0.9. These underlying mechanisms and theoretical models can improve the fundamental understanding of the fatigue performance of composites with incoherent interfaces, as well as the bottom-up design of graphene-metal nanocomposites.