Sulfur is a promising cathode material for lithium–sulfur batteries because of its high theoretical capacity (1,675 mA h g−1); however, its low electrical conductivity and the instability of sulfur-based electrodes limit its practical application. Here we report a facile in situ method for preparing three-dimensional porous graphitic carbon composites containing sulfur nanoparticles (3D S@PGC). With this strategy, the sulfur content of the composites can be tuned to a high level (up to 90 wt%). Because of the high sulfur content, the nanoscale distribution of the sulfur particles, and the covalent bonding between the sulfur and the PGC, the developed 3D S@PGC cathodes exhibit excellent performance, with a high sulfur utilization, high specific capacity (1,382, 1,242 and 1,115 mA h g−1 at 0.5, 1 and 2 C, respectively), long cycling life (small capacity decay of 0.039% per cycle over 1,000 cycles at 2 C) and excellent rate capability at a high charge/discharge current.

Close-celled aromatic polyimide (PI)/graphene foams with low density and improved flexibility were fabricated by thermal foaming of poly(amic ester)/graphene oxide (PAE/GO) precursor powders. The PAE/GO precursor powders were prepared by grafting GO nanosheets with PAE chains, which led to efficient dispersion of the GO nanosheets in PAE matrix. Incorporation of GO resulted in an enhanced foaming capability of the precursor, i.e. enlarged cell size and decreased foam density.Notably, a decrease of 50% in the foam density was obtained by addition of only 2 wt% GO in the precursor. In the foaming process, the GO nanosheets functioned as a versatile agent that not only provided heterogeneous nucleation sites but also produced gaseous molecules. By analyzing the foaming mechanism, the excellent features of GO in heat transfer, gas barrier, and strength reinforcement also facilitated to obtain large and uniform cells in the foams. In addition, the PI/graphene foams exhibited a prominent flexibility and enhanced flexural strength, as an elastic-to-nonelastic conversion of the initial stage of the compressive stress-strain curves was observed by increasing the content of graphene in the PI matrix and an increase of 22.5% in flexural strength was obtained by

Surface functionalization of graphene oxide (GO) sheets using polymers has emerged as a subject of enormous scientific interest due to the wide applications of GO in polymer composites and functional graphene-based materials. In this study, we grafted GO sheets with polystyrene (PS) and poly(styrene−isoprene) (PSI) using GO itself as a cationic initiator for homopolymerization of styrene and copolymerization of styrene and isoprene. The resultant GOg-PS and GO-g-PSI composites displayed enhanced dispersibility in common organic solvents. With increasing the loading of isoprene in the copolymerization reaction, the glass transition temperature of the obtained products gradually decreased, combining the increased roughness of the GO-g-PSI sheets compared with the GO-g-PS sheets, which indicated the increased phase separation between the PS and PI segments in the PSI layer. Therefore, the packing of the GO-g-PS sheets, as well as the GO-g-PSI sheets, was not as compact as that of the GO sheets, leaving gradually increased quantity of pores in the films prepared with GO-g-PS and GO-g-PSI. Capitalizing on these tunable characters, hybridized membranes prepared by depositing GO sheets, GO-g-PS sheets, and the GO-g-PSI sheets obtained with gradually increased loading of isoprene in the copolymerization on the surfaces of commercially available polytetrafluoroethylene membranes displayed gradually increased gas permeability.

The installation of heterojunctions on the surfaces of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is an effective method for promoting the charge separation processes needed for CNT-based electronics and optoelectronics applications. Conjugated polymers are proven state-of-the-art candidates for modifying the surfaces of CNTs. However, all previous attempts to incorporate conjugated polymers to CNTs resulted in unordered interfaces. Herein we show that well-defined chains of regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) were successfully grown from the surfaces of multiwalled CNTs (MWNTs) using surface-initiated Kumada catalyst-transfer polycondensation. The polymerization was found to proceed in a controlled manner as chains of tunable lengths were prepared through variation of the initial monomer-to-initiator ratio. Moreover, it was determined that large-diameter MWNTs afforded highly ordered P3HT aggregates, which exhibited a markedly bathochromically shifted optical absorption due to a high grafting density induced planarization of the polymer chains. Using ultrafast spectroscopy, the heterojunctions formed between the MWNTs and P3HT were shown to effectively overcome the binding energy of excitons, leading to photoinduced electron transfer from P3HT to MWNTs. Finally, when used as prototype devices, the individual MWNT-g-P3HT core-shell structures exhibited excellent photoresponses under a low illumination density.

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