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By Adding Graphene, Researchers Create Superior Polymer
May 20, 2008Researchers at Northwestern University and Princeton University have created a new kind of polymer that, because of its extraordinary thermal and mechanical properties, could be used in everything from airplanes to solar cells.
The polymer, a nanocomposite that incorporates functionalized, exfoliated graphene sheets, even conducts electricity, and researchers hope to use that property to eventually create thermally stable, optically transparent conducting polymers.
The results of their research were published May 11 in the online version of Nature Nanotechnology.
Researcher at the McCormick School of Engineering originally teamed up with researchers at Princeton several years ago. McCormick researchers had experience working with polymer nanocomposites, and Princeton researchers had developed a way to exfoliate, or split apart, graphite sheets into very thin single layer, surface-functionalized graphene sheets.
Previous use of graphite in polymers did not garner significantly improved properties since researchers could never get the graphite exfoliated. That meant the graphite was rigid with a low surface area and could only minimally impact properties of the polymer.
But when researchers put even a small amount the newly exfoliated graphene sheets - enough to equal only .05 percent of the material - into the polymer, they found the graphene changed the polymer's thermal stability temperature by 30 degrees. Even adding graphene sheets equal to .01 percent of the material increased stiffness by 33 percent - far beyond what researchers had predicted. The drastic changes in both the thermal stability and the stiffness after adding just a tiny percentage of functionalized graphene indicated that the graphene changes large regions of the polymer radiating out from the nanoparticle surfaces in a percolating network structure.
The new polymer nanocomposite based on graphene also exhibited the same or superior thermal and mechanical properties as using functionalized single-wall nanotubes in polymer - but was much easier and cheaper to create.
"This is the first time people have been able to demonstrate dramatically altered properties like this with really small quantities of graphite-based materials," says Cate Brinson, Jerome B. Cohen Professor of Mechanical Engineering and corresponding author of the paper.
The graphene sheets also will inherently be able to block moisture and gases from penetrating the material as well as change the thermal stability temperature and improve mechanical properties, making the durable polymer a candidate for use in everything from aircrafts to sports equipment to solar cells
"I think it has enormous potential," Brinson says. "With the ready availability of graphite and the properties we have demonstrated, this new material will enable significant structural scale use of carbon-based nanocomposites."
Next researchers are studying the polymer's electroconductivity, quantifying and optimizing the results with the goal of creating optically transparent conducting polymers that are thermomechanically stable.
In addition to Brinson, other authors of the paper include paper include T. Ramanathan (Northwestern) A. A. Abdala (formerly Princeton, now The Petroleum Institute), S. Stankovich (Northwestern), D. A. Dikin (Northwestern), M. Herrera-Alonso (Princeton), R. D. Piner (formerly Northwestern, now the University of Texas at Austin), D. H. Adamson (Princeton), H. C. Schniepp (Princeton), X. Chen (Northwestern), R. S. Ruoff (Formerly Northwestern, now the University of Texas at Austin), S. T. Nguyen (Northwestern), I. A. Aksay (Princeton), and R. K. Prud'Homme (Princeton).
Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Northwestern University
Researcher at the McCormick School of Engineering originally teamed up with researchers at Princeton several years ago. McCormick researchers had experience working with polymer nanocomposites, and Princeton researchers had developed a way to exfoliate, or split apart, graphite sheets into very thin single layer, surface-functionalized graphene sheets.
Previous use of graphite in polymers did not garner significantly improved properties since researchers could never get the graphite exfoliated. That meant the graphite was rigid with a low surface area and could only minimally impact properties of the polymer.
But when researchers put even a small amount the newly exfoliated graphene sheets - enough to equal only .05 percent of the material - into the polymer, they found the graphene changed the polymer's thermal stability temperature by 30 degrees. Even adding graphene sheets equal to .01 percent of the material increased stiffness by 33 percent - far beyond what researchers had predicted. The drastic changes in both the thermal stability and the stiffness after adding just a tiny percentage of functionalized graphene indicated that the graphene changes large regions of the polymer radiating out from the nanoparticle surfaces in a percolating network structure.
The new polymer nanocomposite based on graphene also exhibited the same or superior thermal and mechanical properties as using functionalized single-wall nanotubes in polymer - but was much easier and cheaper to create.
"This is the first time people have been able to demonstrate dramatically altered properties like this with really small quantities of graphite-based materials," says Cate Brinson, Jerome B. Cohen Professor of Mechanical Engineering and corresponding author of the paper.
The graphene sheets also will inherently be able to block moisture and gases from penetrating the material as well as change the thermal stability temperature and improve mechanical properties, making the durable polymer a candidate for use in everything from aircrafts to sports equipment to solar cells
"I think it has enormous potential," Brinson says. "With the ready availability of graphite and the properties we have demonstrated, this new material will enable significant structural scale use of carbon-based nanocomposites."
Next researchers are studying the polymer's electroconductivity, quantifying and optimizing the results with the goal of creating optically transparent conducting polymers that are thermomechanically stable.
In addition to Brinson, other authors of the paper include paper include T. Ramanathan (Northwestern) A. A. Abdala (formerly Princeton, now The Petroleum Institute), S. Stankovich (Northwestern), D. A. Dikin (Northwestern), M. Herrera-Alonso (Princeton), R. D. Piner (formerly Northwestern, now the University of Texas at Austin), D. H. Adamson (Princeton), H. C. Schniepp (Princeton), X. Chen (Northwestern), R. S. Ruoff (Formerly Northwestern, now the University of Texas at Austin), S. T. Nguyen (Northwestern), I. A. Aksay (Princeton), and R. K. Prud'Homme (Princeton).
Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Northwestern University
Graphene Current Events and Graphene News RSSNew study confirms exotic electric properties of graphene
First, it was the soccer-ball-shaped molecules dubbed buckyballs. Then it was the cylindrically shaped nanotubes. Now, the hottest new material in physics and nanotechnology is graphene: a remarkably flat molecule made of carbon atoms arranged in hexagonal rings much like molecular chicken wire.
Rutgers physicists discover novel electronic properties in two-dimensional carbon structure
Rutgers researchers have discovered novel electronic properties in two-dimensional sheets of carbon atoms called graphene that could one day be the heart of speedy and powerful electronic devices.
Growing geodesic carbon nanodomes
Researchers analyzing the assembly of graphene (sheets of carbon only one atom thick) on a surface of iridium have found that the sheets grow by first forming tiny carbon domes.
Graphite mimics iron's magnetism
Researchers of Eindhoven University of Technology and the Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands show for the first time why ordinary graphite is a permanent magnet at room temperature.
raGraphene and gallium arsenide: two perfect partners find each other
It is the marriage of two top candidates for the electronics of the future, both excentric and extremely interesting: Graphene, one of the partners, is an extremely thin fellow and besides, very young.
Carbon nanotubes could make efficient solar cells
Using a carbon nanotube instead of traditional silicon, Cornell researchers have created the basic elements of a solar cell that hopefully will lead to much more efficient ways of converting light to electricity than now used in calculators and on rooftops.
Researchers design new graphene-based, nano-material with magnetic properties
An international team of researchers has designed a new graphite-based, magnetic nano-material that acts as a semiconductor and could help material scientists create the next generation of electronic devices like microchips.
Camera flash turns an insulating material into a conductor
An insulator can now be transformed to conduct electricity by an ordinary camera flash.
From graphene to graphane, now the possibilities are endless
Ever since graphene was discovered in 2004, this one-atom thick, super strong, carbon-based electrical conductor has been billed as a "wonder material" that some physicists think could one day replace silicon in computer chips.
UCR scientists manipulate ripples in graphene, enabling strain-based graphene electronics
Graphene is nature's thinnest elastic material and displays exceptional mechanical and electronic properties.
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