Graphene oxide dough (GO dough) makes graphene easy to shape and solves manufacturing challenges.
“A Northwestern University team is reshaping the world of graphene — literally.
The team has turned graphene oxide (GO) into a soft, mouldable and kneadable play dough that can be shaped and reshaped into free-standing, three-dimensional structures.
Called “GO dough,” the product might be fun to play with, but it’s more than a toy. The malleable material solves several long-standing — and sometimes explosive — problems in the graphene manufacturing industry.
“Currently graphene oxide is stored as dry solids or powders, which are prone to combustion and explosion,” said Jiaxing Huang, who led the study. “Or they have to be turned into dilute dispersions, which multiply the material’s mass by hundreds or thousands.”
After being shaped into structures, the dough can be converted into dense solids that are electrically conductive, chemically stable and mechanically hard. Or, more water can be added to the dough to transform it into a high-quality GO dispersion on demand.
The dough can also be processed further to make bulk graphene oxide and graphene materials of different forms with tunable microstructures. Huang hopes that GO dough’s ease of use could help graphene meet its much-anticipated potential as a super material.
The research was published today (Jan. 24) in the journal Nature Communications. Huang is a professor of materials science and engineering in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering….