(Digital Presentation) Chemically Modified Graphene for Real-World Applications: Graphene Oxide Liquid Crystal & Single Atom Catalysts

Abstract

Graphene Oxide Liquid Crystal (GOLC) is an emerging 2D carbon based soft material, which exhibits nematic type colloidal discotic liquid crystallinity with the orientational ordering of graphene oxide flakes in good solvents, including water. Since our first discovery of GOLC in aqueous dispersion at 2009, this interesting mesophase has been utilized over world-wide for many different application fields, such as liquid crystalline graphene fiber spinning, highly ordered graphene membrane/film production, prototype liquid crystal display and so on. Interestingly, GOLC also allow us a valuable opportunity for the highly ordered molecular scale assembly of functional nanoscale structures. This presentation will introduce our current status of GOLC research particularly focusing on the nanoscale assembly of functional nanostructures, including highly oriented 1D fibers, 2D films and 3D nanoporous structures. Besides, relevant research works associated to the nanoscale assembly and chemical modification of various low dimensional materials, including 1D carbon nanotubes, 2D TMDs and MXene, will be presented particularly aiming at energy and environmental applications. In the last part of presentation, our wold-first discovery of single atom catalyst will be introduced also, including other research efforts exploiting customized heteroelement doping of graphene based strucures.