Superior Polymer with Graphene
19 May 2008, 15:32
Categories: nanotubes-wires-fullerenes nanocomposites
Researchers at Northwestern University and Princeton University have created a new kind of polymer that could be used in everything from airplanes to solar cells. The polymer, a nanocomposite that incorporates exfoliated graphene sheets, conducts electricity and exhibits the same, or superior, thermal and mechanical properties as using functionalized single-wall nanotubes in polymer, but is much easier and cheaper to create.
When the researchers put even a small amount of newly exfoliated graphene sheets — enough to equal only .05 percent of the material — into poly(methyl methacrylate), 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 graphene sheets also will inherently be able to block moisture and gases from penetrating the material. “I think it has enormous potential,” says Cate Brinson, corresponding author of the paper. “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.”
Posted by: The Editors
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