Intrinsic Toughening in h-BN (IMAGE)

Rice University

Intrinsic Toughening in h-BN

Caption

Computational simulations at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore helped explain the unexpected fracture toughness of 2D hexagonal boron nitride. The material's intrinsic toughness arises from slight asymmetries in its atomic structure (left), which produce a permanent tendency for moving cracks to follow branched paths (right).

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Image courtesy of H. Gao/NTU

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