Structural Reinforcement in Mechanically Interlocked Two-Dimensional Polymers by Suppressing Interlayer Sliding
Abstract
Preserving the superior mechanical properties of monolayer two-dimensional (2D) materials when transitioning to bilayer and layer-stacked structures poses a great challenge, primarily arising from the weak van der Waals (vdW) forces that facilitate interlayer sliding and decoupling. Here, we discover that mechanically interlocked 2D polymers (2DPs) offer a means for structural reinforcement from monolayer to bilayer. Incorporating macrocyclic molecules with one and two cavities into 2DPs backbones enables the precision synthesis of mechanically interlocked monolayer (MI-M2DP) and bilayer (MI-B2DP). Intriguingly, we have observed an exceptionally high effective Young's modulus of 222.4 GPa for MI-B2DP, surpassing those of MI-M2DP (130.1 GPa), vdW-stacked MI-M2DPs (2 MI-M2DP, 8.1 GPa) and other reported multilayer 2DPs. Modeling studies demonstrate the extraordinary effectiveness of mechanically interlocked structures in minimizing interlayer sliding (~0.1 {\AA}) and energy penalty (320 kcal/mol) in MI-B2DP compared to 2 MI-M2DP (~1.2 {\AA}, 550 kcal/mol), thereby suppressing mechanical relaxation and resulting in prominent structural reinforcement.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2401.09099,
title = {Structural Reinforcement in Mechanically Interlocked Two-Dimensional Polymers by Suppressing Interlayer Sliding},
author = {Ye Yang and André Knapp and David Bodesheim and Alexander Croy and Mike Hambsch and Chandrasekhar Naisa and Darius Pohl and Bernd Rellinghaus and Changsheng Zhao and Stefan C. B. Mannsfeld and Gianaurelio Cuniberti and Zhiyong Wang and Renhao Dong and Andreas Fery and Xinliang Feng},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.09099},
year = {2024}
}