Studying strain effects in 2D materials using Kelvin Probe Microcopy

At the nanoscale, materials become exceedingly sensitive to external perturbations. This is quite a relevant factor for wearable and flexible applications, where materials would always bear a certain degree of variable strain/stress. So far it has been very difficult to characterize strain effects in 2D materials, which is crucial to understanding strain-matter interactions. Researchers demonstrate that this limitation can be overcome by using a technique based on Kelvin Probe Microcopy.