  Graphene's exceptional mechanical properties, including its highest-known
stiffness (1 TPa) and strength (100 GPa) have been exploited for various
structural applications. However, graphene is also known to be quite brittle,
with experimentally-measured tensile fracture strains that do not exceed a few
percent. In this work, we introduce the notion of graphene kirigami, where
concepts that have been used almost exclusively for macroscale structures are
applied to dramatically enhance the stretchability of both zigzag and armchair
graphene. Specifically, we show using classical molecular dynamics simulations
that the yield and fracture strains of graphene can be enhanced by about a
factor of three using kirigami as compared to standard monolayer graphene. This
enhanced ductility in graphene should open up interesting opportunities not
only mechanically, but also in coupling to graphene's electronic behavior.
