Super-elastic and fatigue resistant carbon material with lamellar multi-arch microstructure.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27676215.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms12920 and PMC identifier 5052633.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Low-density compressible materials enable various applications but are often hindered by structure-derived fatigue failure, weak elasticity with slow recovery speed and large energy dissipation. Here we demonstrate a carbon material with microstructure-derived super-elasticity and high fatigue resistance achieved by designing a hierarchical lamellar architecture composed of thousands of microscale arches that serve as elastic units. The obtained monolithic carbon material can rebound a steel ball in spring-like fashion with fast recovery speed (∼580 mm s<sup>-1</sup>), and demonstrates complete recovery and small energy dissipation (∼0.2) in each compress-release cycle, even under 90% strain. Particularly, the material can maintain structural integrity after more than 10<sup>6</sup> cycles at 20% strain and 2.5 × 10<sup>5</sup> cycles at 50% strain. This structural material, although constructed using an intrinsically brittle carbon constituent, is simultaneously super-elastic, highly compressible and fatigue resistant to a degree even greater than that of previously reported compressible foams mainly made from more robust constituents.