Intercalated oligomer doubles plasticity for strong and conductive graphene papers and composites

Abstract

Disordered wrinkles inevitably appear in the fluid assembly process of graphene and heavily depress performances of assembled graphene papers. Achieving high plasticity enables the post modulation to rearrange wrinkles by stretching. Here, we obtain an over 100% improved plasticity by intercalating oligomer into graphene oxide (GO) laminates and fabricate strong, stiff and conductive graphene papers (GPs) via post stretching. The intercalated oligomer activates the mobilization of GO sheets and achieves high plasticity of solid GO papers. The improved plasticity allows high stretching ratio and the post-stretched GP features regular orientation (0.95) of graphene sheets and aligned fine wrinkles. The crystalline GPs have a high tensile strength up to 1.3 GPa, Young's modulus of 92.9 GPa and highly electrical conductivity (1.05 × 105 S m−1). The greatly improved plasticity by oligomer extends the processing capability of graphene materials and the strong and conductive GP can be assembled in high performance nanocomposites with excellent electromagnetic interference shielding effectiveness (EMI SE).