An international team of scientists from China and the United States has developed a super tough, highly conductive graphene composite film that can be prepared at low cost at room temperature and is expected to replace the widely used carbon fiber materials.
The research published in the latest issue of the "Journal of the National Academy of Sciences" shows that the team of Prof. Cheng Qunfeng of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Ray Bowman team of the University of Texas at Dallas were inspired by the mechanical structure of natural mother-of-pearl to prepare a microstructure similar to that. Ordered layered graphene structure of mother of pearl.
Cheng Qunfeng told Xinhua News Agency reporters that it was time-consuming and laborious to stack graphene single-chip microcomputers into thick macroscopic materials. For example, to prepare human hair thick graphene films, it is necessary to stack 150,000 monolithic graphene sheets, and the interlaminar interface effect. Weak, poor mechanical properties.
The mother-of-pearl mother has high-strength, high-toughness mechanical properties, which are mainly attributed to the internal regular layered structure and rich interfacial interactions such as ionic bonds, covalent bonds, and hydrogen bonds. The researchers used chemical preparation instead of mechanical stacking to prepare This material. They borrowed the layered connection of mother-of-pearl and firmly stitched the graphene nanosheets by introducing covalent bonds, conjugate bonds, and other cross-linking molecules that are linked together between graphene oxide layers. Together, it produces tough and integrated high conductive graphene films.
Cheng Qunfeng said The tensile strength at break of this film material is 4.5 times that of ordinary graphene film, and the toughness is 7.9 times that of the latter.
According to researchers, the preparation conditions of traditional carbon fiber materials need to exceed 2500 degrees Celsius, but The new material can be prepared at room temperature below 45 degrees Celsius. The strength is comparable to that of carbon fiber composite materials, and the cost is cheaper. It is easy to realize commercial scale production.
Cheng Qunfeng said that this low-cost, high-performance multi-functional graphene nanocomposite has broad application prospects in aerospace, automotive, flexible electronic devices and other fields.