Macroscopic, Flexible, High-Performance Graphene Ribbons

Abstract

Tailoring the structure and properties of graphene fibers is an important step toward practical applications. Here, we report macroscopic, long graphene ribbons formed by combining electrostatic interaction and shear stress during the wet-spinning process. The graphene ribbons are flexible and can be woven into complex structures, and the ribbon morphology can be tailored by controlling the orientation of wrinkles to obtain elasticity within a modest strain. We demonstrate several potential applications of pure or Pt-graphene hybrid ribbons as elastic strain sensors, counter electrodes for dye-sensitized fiber solar cells with cell efficiencies reaching 4.69% under standard illumination and 6.41% with a back reflector, and woven fabric supercapacitor electrodes. Our method can directly fabricate meter-long graphene ribbons with controlled structure and high performance as both energy conversion and energy storage materials.

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].…”

Graphene fiber: a new material platform for unique applications

“…To further control the fiber structure for tailored properties and new applications, Cao et al 23 introduced shear stress during wet spinning to produce macroscopic ribbon-like GFs with high flexibility. The graphene ribbons showed high performance in many applications, such as elastic strain sensors, flexible counter electrodes for fiber solar cells and fabric electrodes for supercapacitors.…”

Mechanical analysis of graphene-based woven nano-fabric

“…Strictly, toughness is defined as the amount of energy per volume, (6) where ε is the strain, f ε is the strain upon failure, σ is the stress, F is the force, u is the displacement, and f u is the displacement upon failure. Table 1 shows the toughness of graphene and GWNFs.…”

“…For instance, crossstacked superaligned carbon nanotube films with anisotropic mechanical properties were reported to make transparent and stretchable conductors [5]. Macroscopic uniform graphene ribbons with high flexibility have been controllably fabricated by a modified wet-spinning method [6]. The hydrogenation of pristine graphene sheets can create three dimensional complex structures, such as nanohelices [7], nanocages [8], and folded graphene origami [9].…”