An international team of researchers have developed a nanocomposite of graphene and copper that is 500 times stronger than pure metal. A related material, which fuses graphene and nickel, is 180 times stronger. The scientists, most of them hailing from Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST; Daejeon, Korea) created the material by layering the metal with monolayer graphene. To accomplish that, they used chemical vapor deposition to create what is reportedly the first metal-graphene multilayer composite. If the material succeeds in being commercialized, it could enable the production of components with an unprecedented strength-to-weight ratio.

The researchers tested the materials using micro-compression tests with transmission electronic microscopes and molecular dynamics simulation.

As the researchers explain in an abstract:

Previous research to create similar composites of graphene and metal have not been as successful as the KAIST's researchers.

With a tensile strength 200 times stronger than steel, graphene is itself the strongest material known to man. So strong, in fact that a sheet of the material as thick as plastic wrap could withstand an elephant standing on it. As Columbia University professor James Hone has explained, such a sheet would not break unless the elephant's weight was concentrated to an area the size of the tip of a pencil.

In a separate research project, Columbia professors James Hone and Jeffrey Kysar showed that crystalline graphene threads could be stitched together to for structures nearly as strong as pure crystalline graphene.