Buy Graphene Aerogel
The main component of Aerogel is graphene, which is one of the strongest materials on Earth. Graphene is mainly used in batteries and aerospace industries, but a version of it, called Graphite, is commonly used in pencils. Not only that, but Graphene also performs outstanding electrically conductive characteristics.
buy graphene aerogel
The structure of graphene aerogel allows for the graphene to keep its amazing properties at the same time keeping the material super lightweight. How is it possible? The magic happens thanks to low density filled with airy pores of the aerogel. That was already an achievement, but the scientists kept developing graphene aerogel 3D printing.
Their technology is based on diffusing graphene within a gel to produce a resin. The key element of this process, called Projection Micro Stereolithography (PuSL), is the 3D printing resolution. With PuSL the scientists were able to reach the Graphene Aerogel 3D printing layer as low as 10μm, which is the closest to the carbon atom thickness of 2D graphene so far.
This 3D printing method is possible thanks to UV LED light, which cures the graphene resin into a solid. The process finishes with drying the structure in a furnace to dispose of the leftovers of components added before to create a gel. The process is explained below in detail on the picture below. Thanks to this 3D technology Graphene as one of the lightest materials on Earth can now be used in three-dimensional manufacturing systems.
Aerogels can be used in various applications, and although they have been around since the 1930s, their development is still progressing (for example, NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland has invented several groundbreaking methods of creating new types of aerogels).
Graphene aerogels are quite elastic and can easily retain their original form after some compression. In addition, the low density of graphene aerogels makes them very absorbent (to the point where it can even absorb more than 850 times its own weight). This means that it could be useful for environmental clean-ups like oil spills, and the aerogels only need to be picked up later after absorbing the spilled material. Graphene aerogel may also have some applications in both the storage and the transfer of energy by enabling the creation of lighter, higher-energy-density batteries - and vigorous research is being done on the matter.
Graphene aerogel are somewhat similar to graphene foams. Graphene foams are usually made by CVD growth on a metal structure (which is later removed), and are so more conductive than graphene aerogels.
Graphene is an emerging class of ultrathin carbon membrane material1,2,3 with high specific surface area4, superior elasticity5, chemical stability3 and high electrical and thermal conductivity6,7. These intrinsic physicochemical properties enable graphene to find widespread applications in nanoelectronics8,9, sensors10,11, catalysis12,13, composites14,15, energy storage16,17 and biomedical scaffolds18. To further explore various macroscopic applications of graphene materials, an essential prerequisite is controlled large-scale assembly of two-dimensional graphene building blocks and transfer of their inherent properties into three-dimensional (3D) structures. Template-guided methods, such as chemical vapour deposition coatings on metallic foams19 have been reported for the creation of 3D graphene monoliths, but the process is not scalable and the materials obtained from these methods are generally brittle under low compression20. Therefore, template-free approaches are still needed for scalable synthesis of 3D graphene macro-assemblies. Due to their simple and versatile synthesis scheme, and the ability to realize a wide range of pore morphologies, including ultrafine pore sizes (
In this work, we demonstrate a 3D printing strategy for the fabrication of 3D graphene aerogels with designed macroscopic architectures. Our approach is based on the precise deposition of GO ink filaments on a pre-defined tool path to create architected 3D structures. Two key challenges in this process are developing a printable graphene-based ink and maintaining the intrinsic properties of single graphene sheets (for example, large surface area, mechanical and electrical properties) in the 3D printed structures. To this end, we have developed a new GO-based ink and printing scheme that allows the manufacture of porosity-tunable hierarchical graphene aerogels with high surface area, excellent electrical conductivity, mechanical stiffness and supercompressibility.
The first challenge for this fabrication strategy is to develop printable GO inks, by tailoring the composition and rheology required for reliable flow through fine nozzles, and self-supporting shape integrity after deposition (for example, highly viscous, non-Newtonian fluids). Printable GO ink development is challenging because most GO-based graphene aerogels begin with fairly dilute precursor GO suspensions (
The process of 3D printing the GO inks such that a 3D graphene aerogel structure is produced also presents several obstacles. Aerogels are ultralow-density porous solids created by carefully replacing the liquid in the pores of the wet gel with air. To convert the 3D printed GO structure to an aerogel, the GO ink must remain wet through printing and gelation such that the liquid in the GO gel can be removed via supercritical- or freeze-drying to avoid gel collapse due to capillary forces. This necessitates printing the GO ink into a bath of liquid that is not only less dense than water but immiscible with our aqueous GO inks. The fabrication scheme for accomplishing this is illustrated in Fig. 1c. An animation of the fabrication scheme used to print the graphene aerogel microlattices can also be seen in Supplementary Movie 1. The GO inks are prepared by combining a GO suspension and silica filler to form a homogenous, highly viscous and thixotropic ink. These GO inks are then loaded into a syringe barrel and extruded through a micronozzle to pattern 3D structures. To prevent the ink from drying in the air, which can clog the tip of the printing apparatus or cause pore collapse in the printed structure, the printing is carried out in an organic solvent bath (isooctane) that is not miscible with the aqueous ink. Finally, the printed structures can be processed according to standard literature methods29,30, followed by etching of the silica filler to obtain the ultimate periodic 3D graphene aerogel microlattices.
(a) Raman and (b) XRD spectra of 3D printed graphene aerogel microlattices made with various ink formulations. Spectra of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) and graphene oxide (GO) powder are included for reference.
To further assess and characterize the stability of the cyclic resilient property of printed graphene aerogels, compression cycling of the graphene aerogel at 50% strain was conducted (Fig. 5). Energy dissipation is one of the key functions of cellular materials, and our printed graphene elastomers exhibit excellent energy absorption capability. In Fig. 5a,b, the energy loss coefficient of printed aerogels decreases from 60 to 30% in the first three cycles and then remains fairly constant. The maximum stress for each cycle in Fig. 5a also shows a similar trend (Fig. 5b). The electrical resistance of the printed graphene aerogels was also determined as a function of cyclic compression (Fig. 5c). The electrical resistance of the printed aerogels shows only a slight decrease after multiple compression events, confirming the remarkable structural resilience of the graphene aerogel microlattices.
We present a general strategy for fabrication of periodic graphene aerogel microlattices via 3D printing. Key factors for successful 3D printing of aerogels included modifying GO precursor suspension such that it serves as printable ink, and adapting the 3D printing process to prevent premature drying of the printed structure. By addressing these issues, 3D printed aerogel microlattices were produced with properties that met or exceeded those of bulk aerogel materials. The graphene microlattices possess large surface areas, good electrical conductivity, low relative densities and supercompressibility, and are much stiffer than bulk graphene of comparable geometric density. By modifying the microstructure and density of the graphene aerogel through changing the ink formulation, we also showed how mechanical properties of the microlattices can be tuned. As graphene aerogels are currently being explored for a broad range of applications, having a manufacturing method for creating periodic or engineered structures using this novel material will further expand the range of applications where graphene can be utilized. In particular, our strategy makes it possible to explore the properties and applications of graphene in a self-supporting, structurally tunable and 3D macroscopic form. This work presents a versatile method for fabricating a broad class of 3D macroscopic graphene aerogel structures of determined geometries, and could lead to new types of graphene-based electronics, energy storage devices, catalytic scaffolds and separation devices. Furthermore, other functional materials can be readily incorporated into the open void space, offering opportunity to create new graphene-based nanocomposites. Finally, this fabrication scheme could be broadly applied to other aerogel systems enabling 3D printed aerogel structures for the myriad of technologies that require high surface area, low-density materials.
Graphene is a two-dimensional material that offers a unique combination of low density, exceptional mechanical properties, large surface area and excellent electrical conductivity. Recent progress has produced bulk 3D assemblies of graphene, such as graphene aerogels, but they possess purely stochastic porous networks, which limit their performance compared with the potential of an engineered architecture. Here we report the fabrication of periodic graphene aerogel microlattices, possessing an engineered architecture via a 3D printing technique known as direct ink writing. The 3D printed graphene aerogels are lightweight, highly conductive and exhibit supercompressibility (up to 90% compressive strain). Moreover, the Young's moduli of the 3D printed graphene aerogels show an order of magnitude improvement over bulk graphene materials with comparable geometric density and possess large surface areas. Adapting the 3D printing technique to graphene aerogels realizes the possibility of fabricating a myriad of complex aerogel architectures for a broad range of applications. 041b061a72