Strain-induced growth of oriented graphene layers revealed by in situ transmission electron microscopy observation

We report on the observation of the strain-induced oriented alignment of graphene layers during the in situ 80 keV e-beam irradiation of an amorphous carbon structure using an aberration corrected (Cs-corrected) electron transmission microscope. E-beam irradiation promoted the amorphous-to-ordered structure transformation and contributed to the formation of small sized graphene flakes by local structure reconstruction. In the mean time, graphene flakes were driven to rotate and re-orient along the strain direction under the uni-axial stress conditions, which finally connected with each other and produced a high oriented structure. Our observations suggest that strain engineering could be an effective method in tuning the microstructure and properties especially in layer-structured materials.