New Nanocomposite Polymer Created

22 May 2008

Recently a research published in online version of Nature Nanotechnology of 11th May claims that researchers had successfully created functionalized exfoliated graphene based nanocomposite. This new polymer exhibits extraordinary mechanical and electrical properties and therefore it is suitable for use in various applications. As this new polymer conducts electricity, scientists hope to create optically transparent conducting polymers from it.

Earlier researchers could not make exfoliate graphene and therefore could not improve the properties of the polymers significantly. Researchers at Princeton have developed exfoliate graphene and researchers at McCornic School of Engineering have used this exfoliate graphene for creating polymer nanocomposites.

When researchers added 0.05 percent of newly exfoliated graphene sheets to the polymer, they found that the thermal stability temperature is increased by 30 degree. Similarly when 0.01 percent of the newly exfoliated graphene was added to the polymer, the stiffness of the material was increased by 33 percent. These results were far better that what were expected by the researchers. These results were also comparable to the functionalized single-wall carbon nanotubes in polymer, however these exfoliated graphene based polymers were much cheaper and easy to create.

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