Polymer/Graphene Hybrid Aerogel with High Compressibility, Conductivity, and “Sticky” Superhydrophobicity

Abstract

The idea of extending functions of graphene aerogels and achieving specific applications has aroused wide attention recently. A solution to this challenge is the formation of a hybrid structure where the graphene aerogels are decorated with other functional nanostructures. An infiltration-evaporation-curing strategy has been proposed by the formation of hybrid structure containing poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) and compressible graphene aerogel (CGA), where the cellular walls of the CGA are coated uniformly with an integrated polymer layer. The resulting composite shows enhanced compressive strength and a stable Young's modulus that are superior to those of pure CGAs. This unique structure combines the advantages of both components, giving rise to an excellent electromechanical performance, where the bulk resistance repeatedly shows a synchronous and linear response to variation of the volume during compression at a wide range of compressed rates. Furthermore, the foamlike structure delivers a water droplet with "sticky" superhydrophobicity and a size as large as 32 μL that remains tightly pinned to the composite, even when it is turned upside-down. This is the first demonstration of superhydrophobicity with strong adhesion on a foamlike structure. These outstanding properties qualify the PDMS/CGA composites developed here as promising candidates for a wide range of applications such as in sensors, actuators, and materials used for biochemical separation and tissue engineering.

Lightweight conductive graphene/thermoplastic polyurethane foams with ultrahigh compressibility for piezoresistive sensing

“…The stress is increased slowly and almost proportionally with the increase of strain of up to about 60%, showing a typical linear-elastic region. 39 Besides, a densification region appears at strains larger than 60%, where the stress is increased dramatically and the maximum compressive stress at 90% strain approaches 0.39 MPa. Therefore, the porous CPC foam encounters more serious destruction of the cell structure in the densification region than in the linear-elastic region, causing higher compression sensitivity.…”

“…37,38 On the other hand, the large specific surface area and good flexibility of graphene will also lead to an extraordinary conductive network and dispersion morphology in CPCs. To explore its application, the threedimensional architectures of graphene or its derivatives (such as graphene aerogel/polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), 39 graphene foam (GF), 40 GF/PDMS, 41,42 etc.) have been investigated for piezoresistive sensors.…”

Enhanced thermal-conductive and anti-dripping properties of polyamide composites by 3D graphene structures at low filler content

“…The self-supported 3D network morphology could not only prevent individual graphene sheets from aggregating and restacking during the process of assembling, but also endowed high-rate transportation of the phonons and provided multidimensional thermal transport pathways, resulting in excellent thermal conductive performance [16]. Furthermore, multifarious 3D graphene-based macrostructures were prepared using various methods aiming to develop their superior mechanical properties, excellent electrical conductivities, etc [17][18][19]. The emergence of 3D graphene offers totally new processing routes to fabricate composites with graphene.…”

High structure stability and outstanding adsorption performance of graphene oxide aerogel supported by polyvinyl alcohol for waste water treatment

“…The peaks at 3392 cm −1 and 3464 cm −1 represent O\ \H stretching vibration for GO and N\ \H stretching vibration for CR. [49,50] The corresponding peak for GO/CR shifts to 3370 cm −1 , which indicates the hydrogen bonding interaction between them. Meanwhile, the peaks at 1607 cm −1 (N_N stretching vibration) [50] for CR and 1641 cm − 1 (C_C stretching vibration) [51] for GO overlap and shift to 1593 cm − 1 for GO/CR.…”