A green and high-yield synthesis of graphene nanorubbon, and demonstration of water-soulable CNT/GONR flexible conductive hybrid

• Main Authors: Yan-Sheng Li, 李彥陞
• Other Authors: Wei-Hung Chiang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/54781254068049370911

碩士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 化學工程系 === 104 === Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) represent a unique form of carbon materials, and their exceptional properties have spurred intensive interest in many applications. The oxidative unzipping using the mixture of H2SO4 and KMnO4 has been demonstrated the most effective method to produced GNRs in a large quantity. However large amount of concentrated H2SO4 (normally 1 mg/ml of CNT concentration in H2SO4) were required to unzip the CNTs completely. The difficulty is due to the van der Waals forces between the coaxial graphene cylinders of CNTs. Therefore there is still a need to develop an environmentally friendly and scalable method to produce GNRs. Here we report a simple wet-chemistry-based oxidative process for producing a nearly 100% yield of GNRs by lengthwise unzipping the multi-walled CNTs (MWCNTs). While oxidative unzipping of MWCNTs has previously been achieved, we used very low amount of H2SO4 (10 mg/ml of CNT concentration in H2SO4) to unzip the MWCNTs effectively. Flexible electronics is a promising technology for convenient transportation and diverse deployment of large volume electronics. In the past few years, many reports have been demonstrated that carbon materials such as graphene and carbon nanotube (CNTs) can be used as the conductive materials for the paper-based flexible electronics. However, it is still difficult to further improve the device performance due to their limited film-based electrical conductance as a result of poor dispersion of carbon materials during the film fabrication. While the conventional preparation of carbon-based conductive paper is to add large amount of surfactants or organic solvent to obtain well dispersion stability, the non-conductive surfactants normally stay on substrates and reduce the overall electrical conductance. In addition, adding non-environmental-friendly surfactants or organic solvents will increase the cost. Here we report a facile fabrication of flexible and surfactant-free conductive paper using carbon nanotube and graphene nanoribbon (GNRs) composites.