Highly Ordered 3D Graphene-Based Polymer Composite
Materials Fabricated by “Particle-Constructing” Method
and Their Outstanding Conductivity
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Abstract
The fabrication of graphene-based
polymer composite materials is of interest and significance from an
academic and an application viewpoint. The widely used method to obtain
such composites was liquid-phase blend of graphene nanosheets (GNSs)
and polymer solutions followed by casting or heat pressing. Until
now, the challenge of dispersing the GNSs uniformly in the polymer
matrix to form controllable and regular structure still remains. Here,
we developed a unique “particle-constructing” method
for fabricating highly ordered 3D graphene-based polymer composite
materials, throughout which the GNSs formed intact, uniform and well-defined
network structure. The strategy contains two steps: wrapping polymer
microspheres with GNSs and mold-compressing them at room temperature,
followed by an appropriate heat treatment. The composite materials
exhibited outstanding electrical properties involving extremely low
percolation threshold and much higher conductivity. The method can
be easily extended to fabricate highly ordered GNS aerogels and more
GNS-based composite materials. The results represent an important
step toward developing GNS-based composite materials with high performance