Folding Large Graphene-on-Polymer Films Yields Laminated Composites with Enhanced Mechanical Performance
- Journal:
- Advanced Materials
- Published:
- DOI:
- 10.1002/adma.201707449
- Affiliations:
- 8
- Authors:
- 12
Research Highlight
Folding beats stacking for graphene
© ANDRZEJ WOJCICKI/Getty
Folding thin sheets of graphene on a polymer enhances their mechanical properties more than stacking the same sheets.
Adding graphene sheets to a material can strengthen the material considerably. Now, an international team that included scientists at the Institute for Basic Sciences in Korea has shown this reinforcement can be enhanced by taking sheets of graphene on the polymer polycarbonate and folding them rather than stacking them as is conventionally done.
The researchers folded an A5-sized graphene-on-polycarbonate sheet 10 times to give an approximately 0.5-mm-thick material that had over 1,000 layers. They then compared its mechanical properties with those of the same number of stacked sheets and found that folding gave better stiffness, strength and toughness due to the synergism between reinforcement and folding.
The researchers note that the same technique could be applied to other two-dimensional nanomaterials.
References
- Advanced Materials 30, 1707449 (2018). doi: 10.1002/adma.201707449