An investigation of the mechanism of graphene toughening epoxy

By Xiao Wang, Jie Jin, Mo Song. 2013

251 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The three different sized chemical functionalized graphene (GO) sheets, namely GO-1 (D50 = 10.79 μm), GO-2 (D50 = 1.72 μm) and GO-3 (D50 = 0.70 μm), were used to fabricate a series of epoxy/GO nanocomposites. Fracture toughness of these materials was assessed. The results indicate that GO sheets were dramatically effective for improving the fracture toughness of the epoxy at a very significant low loading. The enhancement of the epoxy toughness was strongly dependent on the size of GO sheets incorporated. GO-3 with smaller sheet size gave the maximum reinforcement effect compared with GO-1 and GO-2. The incorporation of only 0.1 wt% GO-3 was observed to increase the fracture toughness of pristine epoxy by ∼75%. The toughening mechanism was well understood by fractography analysis of the tested samples. Massive cracks in the fracture surfaces of the epoxy/GO nanocomposites were observed. The GO sheets effectively disturbed and deflected the crack propagation due to its two dimensional structure. GO-3 sheets with smaller size were highly effective in resisting crack propagation, and a large area of whitening zone was observed. The incorporation of GO also enhanced the stiffness and thermal stability of the epoxy.

Subfields: Materials Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering, Mechanics of Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8d63b241ae75ec81b825bae24beb2316c89be695

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Materials Chemistry

1. A. Mouritz
2. Yiu-Wing Mai
3. T. Sainsbury

In Mechanical Engineering

1. Yiu-Wing Mai
2. B. Marouf
3. R. Bagheri
4. R. Pearson
5. A. Kinloch
6. A. Mouritz
7. S. Sprenger
8. A. C. Taylor

In Mechanics of Materials

1. Yiu-Wing Mai
2. R. Bagheri
3. B. Marouf
4. A. Kinloch
5. R. Pearson
6. A. Mouritz
7. Chun Hui Wang
8. S. Sprenger

Citations in the corpus

• Improving the fracture toughness and the strength of epoxy using nanomaterials--a review of the current status. (2015, background): “16 The blending of epoxy resins with nanofillers is a step towards increasing the fracture toughness of thermosetting polymers.”
• Toughening of Epoxy Nanocomposites: Nano and Hybrid Effects (2016, background): “A previous study on particle size effect and fracture behavior of graphene/epoxy composites has shown that fracture toughness increases with decreasing particle size of graphene nanoplatelets.(192) In other studies, the effects of particle dispersion and interface strength on toughening were investi”
• Aligning multilayer graphene flakes with an external electric field to improve multifunctional properties of epoxy nanocomposites (2015, background): “graphene oxide (GO), thermally expanded or reduced GO, chemically-modified graphene, or graphene foam) [4,6,29,30,41–47].”