Elastic straining of free-standing monolayer graphene

The sp² nature of graphene endows the hexagonal lattice with very high theoretical stiffness, strength and resilience, all well-documented. However, the ultimate stretchability of graphene has not yet been demonstrated due to the difficulties in experimental design. Here, directly performing in situ tensile tests in a scanning electron microscope after developing a protocol for sample transfer, shaping and straining, we report the elastic properties and stretchability of free-standing single-crystalline monolayer graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition. The measured Young’s modulus is close to 1 TPa, aligning well with the theoretical value, while the representative engineering tensile strength reaches ~50-60 GPa with sample-wide elastic strain up to ~6%. Our findings demonstrate that single-crystalline monolayer graphene can indeed display near ideal mechanical performance, even in a large area with edge defects, as well as resilience and mechanical robustness that allows for flexible electronics and mechatronics applications.