A great flourish of interest in the development of new
high-strength and high-toughness materials is taking place in contemporary
materials science, with the aim of surpassing the mechanical properties of
commercial high-performance fibres. Recently, macroscopic buckypapers, nanotube
bundles and graphene sheets have been manufactured. While their macroscopic
strength remains 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than their theoretical strength,
and is thus comparable to that of current commercial fibres, recent progress
has been made in significantly increasing toughness. In particular, researchers
have produced extremely tough nanotube fibres with toughness modulus values of
up to 570 J/g, 870 J/g and very recently, including graphene, reaching 970 J/g,
thus well surpassing that of spider silk (170 J/g, with a record for a giant
riverine orb spider of 390 J/g and Kevlar (80 J/g)