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Graphene oxide (GO) suspensions in solvents are the most important feedstocks for preparing GO based composites, and the dispersion state of GO on the microscale in solvent is a dominating factor in determining the physical properties of GO based composites. However, the morphology of GO sheets in solvents has hardly been reported due to the limitation of the characterization methods. Here, we report that the sheet thickness and lateral size of GO in solution can be identified using optical microscopy (OM) within a couple of minutes. The dispersion states of GO, including stretched flakes, scrolls, crumbles, and agglomerates, can also be distinguished. Moreover, the dispersion states, which change with the pH value and ionic strength of the solvent, are closely related to the dispersion stability of the GO suspension and the morphology of the GO/PVA composite. We believe that the fast observation and identification of GO sheets and their structural features in solvents, enabled by OM, opens up a new avenue to studying GO based composite materials in liquids.

Three-dimensional carbon materials combining excellent mechanical, electrical and thermal properties with very good electrochemical resistance have shown great potential for electrochemical energy storage. Building up a three-dimensional current collector can simultaneously optimize the conductive network in the electrochemically active layers and mitigate the volume change at the electrode level during cycling, which leads to enhanced energy density, power density and cycle stability. This review aims to provide an overview of the recent key progress on 3D carbon current collector for Li-ion batteries. According to the type of the connections at the junctions between the nano/micro-scale constituents, we categorize 3D carbon materials into two aspects: 3D carbon networks based on covalent connection and 3D carbon networks based on non-covalent connection. The requirements and the challenges of the 3D carbon based current collector’s design are discussed, which provide inspiration for further exploitation of the current collectors for Li-ion batteries and shed light on batteries based on other electrochemistry.

Graphene sponge (GS) with microscale size, high mechanical elasticity and electrical conductivity has attracted great interest as a sensing material for piezoresistive pressure sensor. However, GS offering a lower limit of pressure detection with high gauge factor, which is closely dependent on the mechanical and electrical properties and determined by the fabrication process, is still demanded. Here, γ-ray irradiation reduced GS is reported to possess a gauge factor of 1.03 kPa–1 with pressure detection limit of 10 Pa and high stress retention of 76% after 800 cycles of compressing/relaxation at strain of 50%. Compared with the carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforced GS, the improved lower limit of pressure detection and gauge factor of the GS prepared by γ-ray irradiation is due to the low compression stress (0.9 kPa at stain of 50%). These excellent physical properties of the GS are ascribed to the mild, residual free, and controllable reduction process offered by γ-ray irradiation.

Graphene is considered a promising material for industrial application based on the intensive laboratory-scale research in the fields of physics, chemistry, materials science and engineering, and biology over the last decade. Many companies have thus started to pursue graphene materials on a scale of tons (for the flake material) or hundreds of thousands of square meters (for the film material) for industrial applications. Though the graphene industry is still in its early stages, very significant progress in mass production and certain industrial applications has become obvious. In this report, we aim to give a brief review of the mass production of graphene materials for some industrial applications and summarize some features or challenges for graphene in the marketplace.

Black phosphorus has attracted great research interest due to its numerous applications in electronic devices, optoelectronic devices, energy storages and so on. Compared with the majority of two-dimensional materials, black phosphorus possesses a unique property, i.e. the strong in-plane anisotropy. All the properties reported so far, including its effective mass, electron mobility, light absorption, thermal conductivity and so on, have shown great anisotropy in the basal plane. This property renders black phosphorus unique applications not achievable with other two-dimensional materials. In this work, however, we discover a remarkable isotropic behavior in the strongly anisotropic black phosphorus, i.e. its electrostatic screening of point charges. We use the tip-induced band bending of a scanning tunneling microscope to map out the Coulomb field of ionized potassium adatoms on black phosphorus, and reveal its isotropic charge screening. This discovery is important for understanding electron scattering and transport in black phosphorus., Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures

A properly strained graphene monolayer or bilayer is expected to harbour periodic pseudo-magnetic fields with high symmetry, yet to date, a convincing demonstration of such pseudo-magnetic fields has been lacking, especially for bilayer graphene. Here, we report the first definitive experimental proof for the existence of large-area, periodic pseudo-magnetic fields, as manifested by vortex lattices in commensurability with the moir\'e patterns of low-angle twisted bilayer graphene. The pseudo-magnetic fields are strong enough to confine the massive Dirac electrons into circularly localized pseudo-Landau levels, as observed by scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy, and also corroborated by tight-binding calculations. We further demonstrate that the geometry, amplitude, and periodicity of the pseudo-magnetic field can be fine-tuned by both the rotation angle and heterostrain applied to the system. Collectively, the present study substantially enriches twisted bilayer graphene as a powerful enabling platform for exploration of new and exotic physical phenomena, including quantum valley Hall effects and quantum anomalous Hall effects., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

The structures of carbon materials greatly affect the electrochemical properties of sulfur/carbon composites for lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries. Understanding the effect of carbon structure factors on the electrochemical properties of sulfur/carbon composites helps in rational designing of the cathode material for optimized battery performance. We prepare reduced graphene oxide (RGO), cysteine-modified RGO (RGO-CYS), microwave-expanded graphite oxide (MEGO) and activated-MEGO (aMEGO) with specific surface areas (SSA) of 58–3010 m 2 g −1 , C/O atomic ratios of 2.41–10.81, pore sizes of 0.9–5.6 nm and pore volumes of 0.14–2.03 cm 3 g −1 . The electrochemical performance researches S/RGO-CYS > S/RGO > S/MEGO > S/aMEGO when it is listed in the order of their specific capacity, rate capability and cyclic life. And the S/RGO-CYS delivers a high reversible capacity of 455 mA h g −1 at 8 C. The excellent performance of S/RGO-CYS composite is ascribed to the sulfur-containing functional groups of the RGO-CYS, which helps the sulfur dispersion and stabilizes the dissoluble lithium polysulfides. Our results demonstrate that the surface chemistry of carbon materials plays a more important role than the SSA, pore size and pore volume for the electrochemical properties of sulfur/carbon composites for Li-S batteries.

International audience; High‐performance yet flexible micro‐supercapacitors (MSCs) hold great promise as miniaturized power sources for increasing demand of integrated electronic devices. Herein, this study demonstrates a scalable fabrication of multilayered graphene‐based MSCs (MG‐MSCs), by direct laser writing (DLW) of stacked graphene films made from industry‐scale chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Combining the dry transfer of multilayered CVD graphene films, DLW allows a highly efficient fabrication of large‐areal MSCs with exceptional flexibility, diverse planar geometry, and capability of customer‐designed integration. The MG‐MSCs exhibit simultaneously ultrahigh energy density of 23 mWh cm−3 and power density of 1860 W cm−3 in an ionogel electrolyte. Notably, such MG‐MSCs demonstrate an outstanding flexible alternating current line‐filtering performance in poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)/H2SO4 hydrogel electrolyte, indicated by a phase angle of −76.2° at 120 Hz and a resistance–capacitance constant of 0.54 ms, due to the efficient ion transport coupled with the excellent electric conductance of the planar MG microelectrodes. MG–polyaniline (MG‐PANI) hybrid MSCs fabricated by DLW of MG‐PANI hybrid films show an optimized capacitance of 3.8 mF cm−2 in PVA/H2SO4 hydrogel electrolyte; an integrated device comprising MG‐MSCs line filtering, MG‐PANI MSCs, and pressure/gas sensors is demonstrated.

H. Ji, Y. Zhu, and co-workers demonstrate a 3D hierarchically porous carbon by introducing a polyurethane sponge to template graphene oxide into a 3D interconnected structure while KOH activation generates abundant micropores in its backbone. As described on page 5222, a supercapacitor assembled with this carbon material achieves a high energy density of 89 W h kg(-1) (64 W h L(-1) ) and outstanding power density due to its shortened ion transport distance in three dimensions.

As the isotopic concentration of ultrathin graphite is varied from natural abundance to nearly pure ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}$, the thermal conductivity displays a slight dependence on the isotope concentration at temperatures near its maximum $\ensuremath{\sim}150\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{K}$. The strength of phonon-isotope scattering in the high-isotope impurity-concentration regime is found to be well below that given by a commonly used incoherent and independent isotope impurity scattering model. This finding is in agreement with some recent theoretical predictions that coherent multiple scattering of phonons is important in the measured thermal conductivity of low-dimensional materials in the high-isotope impurity-concentration regime.

Lithium vanadium phosphate (Li3V2(PO4)3, LVP)/reduced graphene oxide (rGO) composite is prepared with a rheological method followed by heat treatment. The size and interface of LVP particles, two important merits for a cathode material, can be effectively tuned by the rGO in the composite, which plays as surfactant to assist sol-gelation and simultaneously as conductive carbon coating. As a consequence, the composite with 7.0 ± 0.4 wt.% rGO shows a capacity of 141.6 mAh g(-1) at 0.075 C, and a rate capacity of 119.0 mAh g(-1) at 15 C with respect to the mass of LVP/rGO composite, and an excellent cycling stability that retains 98.7% of the initial discharge capacity after 50 cycles. The improved electrochemical performance is attributed to the well-controlled rGO content that yields synergic effects between LVP and rGO. Not only do the rGO sheets reduce the size of LVP particles that favor the Li(+) ion migration and the electron transfer during charging and discharging, but also contribute to the reversible lithium ions storage.

Experimental electrical double-layer capacitances of porous carbon electrodes fall below ideal values, thus limiting the practical energy densities of carbon-based electrical double-layer capacitors. Here we investigate the origin of this behaviour by measuring the electrical double-layer capacitance in one to five-layer graphene. We find that the capacitances are suppressed near neutrality, and are anomalously enhanced for thicknesses below a few layers. We attribute the first effect to quantum capacitance effects near the point of zero charge, and the second to correlations between electrons in the graphene sheet and ions in the electrolyte. The large capacitance values imply gravimetric energy storage densities in the single-layer graphene limit that are comparable to those of batteries. We anticipate that these results shed light on developing new theoretical models in understanding the electrical double-layer capacitance of carbon electrodes, and on opening up new strategies for improving the energy density of carbon-based capacitors.

Monolayer graphene was deposited on a Si wafer substrate decorated with SiO(2) nanoparticles (NPs) and then exposed to aryl radicals that were generated in situ from their diazonium precursors. Using micro-Raman mapping, the aryl radicals were found to selectively react with the regions of graphene that covered the NPs. The enhanced chemical reactivity was attributed to the increased strain energy induced by the local mechanical deformation of the graphene.