Credit: (Credit: Rob Felt, Georgia Institute of Technology)
Ting Zhu, right, an associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech, works with graduate students Feifei Fan, seated, and Zhi Zeng to calculate the fracture toughness of graphene that has been pre-cracked. Georgia Tech's calculations and physical experiments at Rice University led to the conclusion that graphene, the one-atom layer of carbon, is only as strong as its weakest link.