Investigation of graphene as a powder and in a resin coating

Abstract

Graphene is two-dimension monolayers of carbon atoms organized in a hexagonal lattice. The road map of application of graphene shows that this is a potentially disruptive technology. NanoXplore already produced several generations of graphene and the recent product is the Graphene Black 3X, a 6-10 layers’ graphene. In the present investigation, by incorporating black 3X graphene sheets into a vinyl resin matrix, we show that is possible to fabricate low graphene content conductive coatings with high thermal stability. TGA analysis shows that these nanocomposites can be used at a temperature lower than 300oC without any chemical decomposition. The conductive coatings can be achieved with the addition of only 5 wt.% of graphene. The highest value of conductivity is found to be 3.7 x 10-2 S/cm with 20 wt.% of G3X, sufficiently high for various electrical devices. Furthermore, the morphological analysis by SEM and AFM revealed uniform distribution of black 3X graphene within the polymer matrix and the thickness of graphene sheets. The mechanical properties can be increased 1.5 times comparing 5 wt.% and 7 wt.& loading of the graphene of the composite. This increment is exceptional high and rarely reported in the literature for this kind of coating.

Date	10 Jul 2019
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Claudiane Ouellet-Plamondon (Supervisor)