Researchers at the University of Oxford in the UK and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US are the first to combine experimental and theoretical approaches at the atomic level to study how monolayer molybdenum sulphide (a typical 2D material) fractures. Thanks to transmission electron microscopy observations, backed up with large-scale molecular dynamics simulations, they have found that atomically sharp cracks propagate throughout the material in a way that generates the least energy to break the material apart. The experiments reveal fundamental aspects of fracture mechanics that are simply not possible to see in thicker materials, and they could help to design more reliable nanodevices made from 2D structures………
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/66614
