SMA-Assisted Exfoliation of Graphite by Microfluidization for Efficient and Large-Scale Production of High-Quality Graphene

• Main Authors: Yuzhou Wang, Xianye Zhang, Haihui Liu, Xingxiang Zhang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-11-01
• Series: Nanomaterials
• Subjects: liquid phase exfoliation; microfluidization; graphene; large-scale fabrication; polyamide 66 composites
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-4991/9/12/1653

In this paper, the sodium salt of styrene-maleic anhydride copolymer (SMA) was used as a stabilizer in the process of graphite exfoliation to few-layer graphene using the technique of microfluidization in water. This method is simple, scalable, and cost-effective, and it produces graphene at concentrations as high as 0.522 mg mL^−1. The generated high-quality graphene consists of few-layer sheets with a uniform size of less than 1 μm. The obtained graphene was uniformly dispersed and tightly integrated into a polyamide 66 (PA66) matrix to create high-performance multifunctional polymer nanocomposites. The tensile strength and thermal conductivity of 0.3 and 0.5 wt% EG/PA66 composites were found to be ~32.6% and ~28.8% greater than the corresponding values calculated for pure PA66, respectively. This confirms that the new protocol of liquid phase exfoliation of graphite has excellent potential for use in the industrial-scale production of high-quality graphene for numerous applications.