Strong, Ductile, and Tough Nanocrystal-Assembled Freestanding Gold Nanosheets.

Yu, Qing; Zhang, Jingyang; Li, Jia; Wang, Tianyu; Park, Minhyuk; He, Quanfeng; Zhang, Zhibo; Liang, Tao et al. · Nano Lett · 2022

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

The structural and mechanical properties of low-dimensional nanostructured metals have been attracting tremendous interest in the fast-growing fields of nanosciences and nanotechnologies. However, it still remains a challenge today to develop strong yet ductile low-dimensional metals that can support the further development of nanodevices. Here, through the polymer-assisted assembly of gold nanocrystals, we successfully fabricated the freestanding, ultrathin gold nanomaterial. Unlike conventional bulk gold or other low-dimensional gold nanostructures (i.e., nanowires and nanosheets), these gold nanosheets are composed of highly distorted gold nanocrystals that are 3-5 nm in size, which are joined together through nanosized amorphous carbon interphases. As a result, the gold nanosheets exhibit superb strength (up to 1.2 GPa), excellent ductility (>50%), and superior fracture toughness (>100 J/m<sup>2</sup>), outperforming various gold nanostructures hitherto reported.

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