Study On Uniform Gel Materials With Graphene As Skeleton Or Reinforced Fillers

Graphene is a honeycomb two-dimensional material composed of single-layer sp~2 carbon atoms.The unique electronic structure of graphene contributes to excellent physicochemical properties.Besides,the excellent mechanical properties and the very thin thickness make it have great potential applications in the fields of optoelectronics,biological and adsorption.The usage of two-dimensional graphene to three-dimensional materials can significantly improve the specific surface area and mechanical properties of three-dimensional materials and bring other functional properties.Tetra-PEG(polyethylene glycol)hydrogel is one of high-strength hydrogels,the uniform network structure of which brings good compression property,but at the same time poor tensile properties and functionality.In this paper,tetra-PEG/RGO(reduced graphene oxide)nanocomposite hydrogel was prepared with graphene as a kind of enhanced nanoparticle and the effect of graphene on the structure and properties of hydrogels were studied in detail.The results show that not only the introduction of graphene makes the compressive strength of RGO/tetra-PEG hydrogel increase 29times more than that of the traditional tetra-PEG hydrogel,but also the tensile strength was increased by 9 times.Moreover,the conjugated structure of graphene can interact with benzene ring of organic dye molecules,so that the RGO/tetra-PEG hydrogel shows an excellent dye adsorption performance.The introduction of graphene also makes this hydrogel have a response to near infrared light(NIR).The RGO/tetra-PEG hydrogels enhanced by graphene have excellent mechanical properties and functional properties,which can expand the application of traditional tetra-PEG hydrogels.On the other hand,graphene aerogels(GA)have good performance in the field of electrochemistry,adsorption and catalysis due to three-dimensional cross-linking network.However,it is still a challenge to fabricate GA with excellent mechanical properties and functional properties by an easy method.Here,triethylenediamine was used as a structural enhancer and a reducing agent to prepare GA with hyperelasticity.Its compressive strength is up to6.8 MPa,and it has good adsorption capacity for various organic solvents.