Graphene oxide bulk material reinforced by heterophase platelets with multiscale interface crosslinking

Abstract

Graphene oxide (GO) or reduced-GO offer excellent mechanical, electrical and chemical properties. Their nanocomposites have been increasingly explored for attractive applications in diverse fields. However, due to the flexible feature and weak interlayer interactions of GO sheets, flexural mechanical properties of GObased composites especially for the bulk materials are largely restrained, which would hinder their use in real situations. Here inspired by amorphous/crystalline heterophase features within nacreous platelets, we construct a centimetre-sized GO-based bulk, the building blocks of which consist of crystalline GO and amorphous/crystalline MnO2 phases adhered by polymer-based crosslinkers. The GO/MnO2 heterophase layers are stacked and hot-pressed with further crosslinking between the layers to form bulk artificial nacre. The resultant GO/MnO2-based layered (GML) bulk exhibits the highest flexural strength (up to 203.4 MPa) among all of GO-based bulk materials. Moreover, an excellent fracture toughness, a strong impact resistance and light weight are also achieved. Mechanical and simulation analyses corroborate that the highly ordered heterophase structure together with complex crosslinking interactions across multiscale interfaces, lead to superior mechanical properties. We expect that these results provide interesting insights into the design of structural materials and allow the use of high-performance GO-based bulks in engineering and military applications.

Defect‐Induced Dense Amorphous/Crystalline Heterophase Enables High‐Rate and Ultrastable Sodium Storage

“…[ 28 ] Further, the structural stability can be enhanced due to the synergistic effect between different phases. [ 29 ] Despite these promising prospects, the fabrication of such amorphous/crystalline heterostructure electrodes remains to be a great challenge. Furthermore, most reported heterophase materials are either heterogeneous, in which the crystalline and amorphous interfaces consist of different chemical compositions, such as Co 3 O 4 (crystalline)/TiO 2 (amorphous), [ 30 ] or homogeneous materials with the sparse crystalline and amorphous interfaces, such as Nb 2 O 5 , Si, and SnO 2 .…”

Isotropically Ultrahigh Thermal Conductive Polymer Composites by Assembling Anisotropic Boron Nitride Nanosheets into a Biaxially Oriented Network

“…When preparing thermally conductive polymer composites, improving the filler loading usually results in poor mechanical properties. By arranging the BN nanosheets into a biaxially oriented network similar to the architecture of nacre, − our composite possesses high thermal conductivity and high compressive strength simultaneously. These all demonstrate that the BN/PU composite with the biaxially oriented network was an attractive candidate for TIMs.…”

Robust and Scalable In Vitro Surface Mineralization of Inert Polymers with a Rationally Designed Molecular Bridge

“…The ethanol−water layer comprised 1300 H 2 O and 500 C 2 H 5 OH molecules, with a density of 0.930 g/cm 3 . To speed up the computation, the PTFE layer was simulated using 100 C 32 F 66 molecules with a density of 2.2 g/cm 3 . PFSS molecules would hydrolyze immediately into silanol when added to the mixture of water and ethanol.…”

“…Biomineralization has attracted increasing attention as an interdisciplinary field of bioinspired materials science, physics, chemistry, as well as structural biology. It refers to the process by which living organisms selectively absorb elements from their surroundings and assemble them into functional structures under precise biological control. − The materials formed by this process are very significant for living organisms because key functions can be provided for them to survive in strict environments during their long-term evolution, such as vertebrate bones for skeleton supports, shells for soft tissue protection, and magnetite for navigation. − The formation of biomineralized materials is controlled by cells, proteins, and organic groups, by which the nucleation, growth, phase transition, orientation, and assembly of inorganic ions are regulated to become macroscopic visible biological minerals. − For instance, the elementary units of collagen for the formation of calcium phosphates, calcium carbonates, and silica to be bones, teeth, and skeletons, respectively, are amino acids that contain acyl, amino, polar, or charged residues. − As such, a new strategy of biomimetic mineralization is created, which facilitates to endow flexible and processable organic materials with high strength, hardness, and resistance, for broader applications, like silicified collagen for load-bearing implants , and hydrophobic chitin-silica composites for oil/water separation and light-guiding materials. , However, conventional organic materials are mainly composed of carbon and hydrogen elements without such fine-grained sites, so that the mineralization of organic materials does not go as smooth as we expected, although great efforts have been devoted to many developed methods; ,− until now, only a few cases (e.g., the combination of silica with silicone rubber) succeed to achieve practical applications …”