Easy Preparation of Readily Self-Assembled High-Performance Graphene Oxide Fibers

Abstract

Graphene oxide (GO) was recently reported to assemble into one-dimensional fiber precursors that can be used to produce next-generation multifunctional graphene-based materials. This study describes the facile fabrication of GO fibers with excellent mechanical properties, utilizing a diamine cross-linker that forms ion bridges between the GO layers. Organic co-coagulants and postdrawing processes, which are usually employed in typical GO spinning processes, were not used here. The GO layers readily aligned along the spinning axis, and the GO formed closely packed structures in the fibers. The fibers displayed a Young’s modulus of 26.6 GPa and a maximal tensile strength of 384.3 MPa. The interlayer microstructure of the GO sheets could be tuned by modifying the structures of the cross-linking diamine groups, yielding a range of mechanical properties. These observations suggested that our newly developed GO fiber synthesis method could allow applications of graphene-based fibrous materials through GO surface chemistry modification approaches.

Graphene fiber: a new trend in carbon fibers

“…Besides wet-spinning, there have emerged some alternative methods for the fabrication of GFs from GO dispersions [61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74]. For example, Dong et al proposed a dimensionally confined hydrothermal strategy for GFs [66].…”

Advances in liquid crystalline nano-carbon materials: preparation of nano-carbon based lyotropic liquid crystal and their fabrication of nano-carbon fibers with liquid crystalline spinning

“…Although there is an ordered structure tical textures of the liquid crystalline phases of the GO (nematic, lamellar, chiral) and their corresponding structural models were investigated. Furthermore, a lot of methods for fabricating graphene-based composites by liquid crystalline spinning have been reported, including fiber [83][84][85][86][87], aerogel [88], film [89], and network [90] processes.…”

“…11) [84,85]. Control of coagulation baths has been applied as another method to improve the properties of GO fibers [86,87].…”

Property enhancement of graphene fiber by adding small loading of cellulose nanofiber

“…14 In a work reported by Gao, the stronger graphene composite fiber has been prepared by grafting PAN on GO sheets to enhance inter-layer adhesion 15 , while larger graphene sheets were utilized as building block to construct stronger π-π interaction of adjacent sheets in Tour's group and Gao's group; 16,17 Also diamine cross-linker was introduced in Park's group as coagulation bath to form ion bridges between the adjacent GO sheets. 18 Other polymer such as hyperbranched polyglycerol (HPG), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) 19 were also introduced in graphene fiber, mainly to enhance the adhesion of the GO sheets. In Property enhancement of graphene fiber by adding small loading of cellulose nanofiber Nanocomposites 2016 VOL.…”

“…GO dope with stable lyotropic liquid crystalline structure was of key importance, which usually requires a high concentration or large sized GO sheets. 18,20 Thus, it is highly desired to find an easy way for the formation of stable liquid crystalline structure in GO dope with less concentration or smaller GO sheets. Cellulose nanofiber (CNF) is one-dimensional nanosized and usually utilized as nanobuilding block for nanocomposites.…”