Graphene–amorphous carbon with interwoven networks for enhanced strength

High-strength, high-conductivity graphite-based carbon materials (GCMs) are widely explored for diverse applications. Designing and regulating the graphitic phase microstructure is essential for simultaneously enhancing mechanical and electrical properties, particularly mechanical strength. Here, we propose a two-step strategy to synthesize graphene-amorphous carbon (GAC) with interwoven graphene networks. By leveraging the different graphitization tendencies between polyacrylamide and glucose, we obtained GAC with a microscale structure in which few-layers graphene and amorphous carbon are uniformly interwoven. Therefore, the GAC exhibits exceptional compressive and flexural strengths of 303 MPa and 203 MPa, respectively, greatly exceeding previously reported performance benchmarks. Microscopic studies reveal that crack propagation is significantly impeded by the network of cross-cutting few-layer graphene, resulting in continuous crack deflections, which account for the outstanding mechanical performance of the GAC. This microstructure design strategy provides the rationale for developing ultrahigh-strength GCMs.

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Publication Details

Journal
Nature Communications
Published
2025-11-26
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65877-8
Citations
5
Primary Topic
Graphene research and applications
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
2.59

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article

Graphene–amorphous carbon with interwoven networks for enhanced strength

Xiaomeng Yang, Hao Ding, Weidong Fei, Shun Dong et al.
5 citations
Nature Communications
Graphene research and applications
2.59
article

Graphene–amorphous carbon with interwoven networks for enhanced strength

Xiaomeng Yang, Hao Ding, Weidong Fei, Shun Dong, Qianru Lin, Xiao Lu, Yongchun Zou, Wanxiaonan Chen, Mingyi Tan, Qingtan Ren, Jie Sheng, Peng Zhang, Bin Liu, Weili Li, Lidong Wang, Zhiqi Wang, Wenzheng Zhang, Lan Yang, Deyu Zhang, Shanyi Du, Boqian Sun, Yuan Cheng, Yuying Wu, Yuhao Fang, Linsen Zhang, Daming Chen, Jiecai Han, Xinghong Zhang, Pengcheng Zhang
article en
5 citations

Abstract

High-strength, high-conductivity graphite-based carbon materials (GCMs) are widely explored for diverse applications. Designing and regulating the graphitic phase microstructure is essential for simultaneously enhancing mechanical and electrical properties, particularly mechanical strength. Here, we propose a two-step strategy to synthesize graphene-amorphous carbon (GAC) with interwoven graphene networks. By leveraging the different graphitization tendencies between polyacrylamide and glucose, we obtained GAC with a microscale structure in which few-layers graphene and amorphous carbon are uniformly interwoven. Therefore, the GAC exhibits exceptional compressive and flexural strengths of 303 MPa and 203 MPa, respectively, greatly exceeding previously reported performance benchmarks. Microscopic studies reveal that crack propagation is significantly impeded by the network of cross-cutting few-layer graphene, resulting in continuous crack deflections, which account for the outstanding mechanical performance of the GAC. This microstructure design strategy provides the rationale for developing ultrahigh-strength GCMs.

Nature CommunicationsVol. 16(1)
Harbin Institute of Technology (CN), Southern University of Science and Technology (CN), Suzhou Research Institute (CN), Xi'an Jiaotong University (CN)
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Openalex Percentile: Top 9%
Graphene research and applications
2.59
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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