Polystyrene as Graphene Film and 3D Graphene Sponge Precursor.

Alejandra Rendón-Patiño,Antonio Doménech-Carbó,Ana Primo,Hermenegildo García,Jinan Niu

doi:10.3390/nano9010101

Abstract

Polystyrene as a thin film on arbitrary substrates or pellets form defective graphene/graphitic films or powders that can be dispersed in water and organic solvents. The materials were characterized by visible absorption, Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, electron and atomic force microscopy, and electrochemistry. Raman spectra of these materials showed the presence of the expected 2D, G, and D peaks at 2750, 1590, and 1350 cm−1, respectively. The relative intensity of the G versus the D peak was taken as a quantitative indicator of the density of defects in the G layer.

Highlights

Due to its wide availability and with the main objective of plastic wastes reutilization as carbon source, pyrolysis of polystyrene has attracted considerable attention [1,2]
Since the target of all these studies has been the use of polystyrene wastes as feedstock [1,11,12,13], the vast majority of the reports on polystyrene pyrolysis have focused on the analysis of the gas phase products, with the target being the obtainment of a suitable mixture to be used as fuel
A few years ago, we reported that pyrolysis of natural polysaccharides considered to be food and agricultural wastes is a suitable process for the preparation of defective graphenes either as large-area films on arbitrary substrates [14] or as suspensions after sonication of the carbonaceous residue in liquid media [15]

Summary

Introduction

Due to its wide availability and with the main objective of plastic wastes reutilization as carbon source, pyrolysis of polystyrene has attracted considerable attention [1,2]. Continuing with alternative procedures for graphene preparation based on pyrolysis, either as films or as dispersible powders that could render graphene suspensions, it is of interest to explore the possibility to use synthetic organic polymers that do not contain oxygen in their composition as precursors. In this way, the formation of graphene materials lacking oxygen in their composition could be possible. The procedure can be adapted to the formation of tridimensional (3D) graphene sponges by coating using silica spheres of uniform particle size as hard templates

Preparation of Graphene Films

Preparation of Graphene Sponges

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Findings

Conclusions