1. Shear exfoliation synthesis of large-scale graphene-reinforced nanofibers
- Author
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Pulickel M. Ajayan, Thierry Tsafack, Jarin Joyner, Chandra Sekhar Tiwary, Prasanth Raghavan, Devashish Salpekar, Brahmanandam Javvaji, Sanjit Bhowmick, D. Roy Mahapatra, Peter Samora Owuor, and Robert Vajtai
- Subjects
Materials science ,Graphene ,Polyacrylonitrile ,Stiffness ,02 engineering and technology ,General Chemistry ,010402 general chemistry ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,01 natural sciences ,0104 chemical sciences ,law.invention ,Molecular dynamics ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,chemistry ,law ,Nanofiber ,medicine ,Ionic conductivity ,General Materials Science ,Graphite ,Composite material ,medicine.symptom ,0210 nano-technology ,Elastic modulus - Abstract
Liquid phase exfoliation of two-dimensional (2D) materials from their bulk counterparts has attracted a lot of attention due to its applications in the large-scale synthesis of these materials. Herein, detailed molecular dynamics simulations to understand the exfoliation process of graphene followed by an in-situ exfoliation experiment of graphite suspended in polyacrylonitrile (PAN) using a well-known electro-spinning technique were performed. Submicron-scale fibers reinforced with graphene exhibited multi-fold improvements in terms of mechanical (stiffness, elastic modulus), thermal (degradation temperature) and electrochemical (ionic conductivity) properties. This method is a unique way of synthesizing in-situ composites with large lengths and submicron-diameter fibers. The present technique and the key ideas can be readily extended to other 2D materials as well.
- Published
- 2020