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Nylon-Graphene Composite Nonwovens As Monolithic Conductive or Capacitive Fabrics

Monday, 29 May 2017: 08:10
Chequers (Hilton New Orleans Riverside)
W. Gao (North Carolina State University)
Here we describe a nylon-graphene nonwoven (NGN) composite, prepared via dip-coating of nylon-6 nonwovens with graphen oxide (GO) in aqueous dispersions, which is later chemically reduced to introduce electrical conductivity. The correlation between the conductivity and the graphene loading is described by the percolation scaling law, with an exponent  of 1.2 and a critical concentration of 0.005 wt.%, the lowest among all the reported nylon systems. Monolithic supercapacitors have been further developed on the nylon-GO nonwoven composite (NGO), via a CO2-laser patterning process. The nylon nonwoven works as the sorbent matrix, leading to the high GO loadings that ensure sufficient coating thicknesses for the subsequent laser patterning. Deep electrodes were thus easily generated by the laser beam, and our best monolithic supercapacitors exhited an areal capacitance of 10.37 mF/cm2 , much higher than the 1~3 mF/cm2 reported for typical microsupercapacitors in PVA-H2SO4 electrolyte. Moreover, our supercapacitors were able to retain a capacitance density of 5.07 mF/cm2 at a higher scan rate (1.0 V/s), probably due to the facilitated ion migration within the highly porous and interconnected nonwoven framework. This is the first report of NGN with fascinating conductive and capacitive behaviors, demonstrating great potential for applications in wearable electronics and disposable energy storage systems.