Production of High-Concentration Graphene Dispersions in Low-Boiling-Point Organic Solvents by Liquid-Phase Noncovalent Exfoliation of Graphite with a Hyperbranched Polyethylene and Formation of Graph

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• 作者：Lixin Xu ; John-Wesley McGraw ; Fan Gao ; Mark Grundy ; Zhibin Ye ; Zhiyong Gu ; Jeffrey L. Shepherd
• 刊名：The Journal of Physical Chemistry C
• 出版年：2013
• 出版时间：May 23, 2013
• 年：2013
• 卷：117
• 期：20
• 页码：10730-10742
• 全文大小：556K
• 年卷期：v.117,no.20(May 23, 2013)
• ISSN：1932-7455

文摘

We report in this paper the successful production of stable high-concentration graphene dispersions in low-boiling-point, low-polarity conventional organic solvents (chloroform and THF) by liquid-phase noncovalent exfoliation of graphite assisted with a hyperbranched polyethylene (HBPE) as the stabilizer. In the exfoliation process, HBPE adsorbs onto the surface of exfoliated graphene flakes, providing steric stabilization against their restacking. A systematic investigation on the effects of exfoliation conditions, including the solvent and the amounts of graphite and HBPE, has been conducted. Graphene dispersions with the concentration up to 0.18 mg/mL in chloroform and 0.045 mg/mL in THF have been obtained. It is also demonstrated that the dispersions can be further concentrated by solvent evaporation to give highly concentrated stable dispersions at 3.4 mg/mL. Through their characterizations with transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy, the majority of the graphene products is found to be high-quality, defect-free, few-layer graphene flakes with the layer number between 2 and 4 and the lateral dimension in the range of 0.2鈥?.5 渭m. The dispersions can be fabricated into flexible conductive free-standing graphene films and be used to prepare graphene/ethylene copolymer composites through solution blending, which show significant enhancements in both thermal and mechanical properties.