Electrostatic assembly between Fe3O4 nanospheres and graphene oxide, and subsequent hydrothermal assembly with additional graphene sheets, leads to Fe3O4 nanospheres encapsulated in the graphene shells and interconnected by the graphene networks. Such 3D Fe3O4 /graphene foams exhibit enhanced lithium storage with excellent cycling performance and rate capability.

Traditional elastomers are mostly dielectrics; existing conductive elastomers are conductive composites with electric conductors. Herein, we introduce a series of ionic conducting elastomers (ICE) by salt in polymer strategy. The ICEs possess good stretchability, transparency and ionic conductivity. Moreover, the ICEs exhibit very high stability in air, under high temperature and voltage, with excellent adhesion properties and no corrosive effects to metal electrodes. Touch sensors are fabricated using these ICEs—impedance spectra and impedance complex plane are tested and analyzed to clarify different stimulus of the touch sensors. These ICEs provide possibilities for flexible electronics and soft machines.

The ability to pattern functional moieties with well-defined architectures is highly important in material science, nanotechnology and bioengineering. Although two-dimensional surfaces can serve as attractive platforms, direct patterning them in solution with regular arrays remains a major challenge. Here we develop a versatile route to pattern two-dimensional free-standing surfaces in a controlled manner assisted by monomicelle close-packing assembly of block copolymers, which is unambiguously revealed by direct visual observation. This strategy allows for bottom-up patterning of polypyrrole and polyaniline with adjustable mesopores on various functional free-standing surfaces, including two-dimensional graphene, molybdenum sulfide, titania nanosheets and even on one-dimensional carbon nanotubes. As exemplified by graphene oxide-based mesoporous polypyrrole nanosheets, the unique sandwich structure with adjustable pore sizes (5–20 nm) and thickness (35–45 nm) as well as enlarged specific surface area (85 m2 g−1) provides excellent specific capacitance and rate performance for supercapacitors. Therefore, this approach will shed light on developing solution-based soft patterning of given interfaces towards bespoke functions.

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Electrochemically exfoliated graphene (EEG) is a new generation of high-quality graphene that holds great promise for the construction of hybrid materials. However, the assembly of EEG hybrids with well-defined nanostructures has remained a major challenge. In this study, we demonstrate a bottom-up approach toward the assembly of EEG sheets with a series of functional nanoparticles (Si, Fe3O4, and Pt NPs) into two-dimensional sandwich-like hybrid nanostructures. Polyaniline in the emeraldine base form functions as a versatile dopant to couple NPs onto EEG through either electrostatic interactions or hydrogen bonding. This protocol enables processing and assembly of EEG using an economical pathway, for which we further demonstrate the potential application of EEG-Si hybrids as high-performance anode material for lithium storage.