Mortise-and-tenon like van der Waals joints for strong and tough materials via multi-flow microfluidics

The construction of anisotropic structures from their anisotropic building blocks across multiple length scales usually leads to unique properties of materials, such as nanowires and nanofilaments. However, two-dimensional nanosheets with distinct anisotropic topology are scarcely employed to engineer diverse anisotropic materials with desirable properties. Here, we report anisotropy-tailored graphene nanosheets with periodic arrangement in three-dimensional space, produced by multi-flow microfluidics. Upon film densification, a classical Chinese mortise-and-tenon like van der Waals joint architecture forms from such anisotropic-tailored graphene nanosheets, enabling the resulting material to achieve a tensile strength of 2.11 gigapascals and an exceptional toughness of 87.44 megajoules per cubic meter. This philosophy of the multi-flow microfluidics controlling anisotropy-tailored graphene nanosheets and the mortise-and-tenon joint model should find use in the designing of structural materials. Control of the arrangement of anisotropic units allows for control of properties. Authors achieve direction tailoring of 2D anisotropic sheets by multiflow technique, offering a mortise-and-tenon-like vdW joint model for strengthening and toughening in graphene