Multifunctionality and Control of the Crumpling and Unfolding of Large-Area Graphene

By Jianfeng Zang, Seunghwa Ryu, Nicola Maria Pugno, Qiming Wang, Qing Tu, Markus J. Buehler, Xuanhe Zhao. Nature Materials, 2013

769 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Crumpled graphene films are broadly used, for instance in electronics1, energy storage2, 3, composites4, 5, and biomedicine6. Although it is known that the degree of crumpling affects graphene's properties and the performance of graphene-based devices and materials3, 5, 7, the controlled folding and unfolding of crumpled graphene films has not been demonstrated. Here we report an approach to reversibly control the crumpling and unfolding of large-area graphene sheets. We show with experiments, atomistic simulations and theory that, by harnessing the mechanical instabilities of graphene adhered on a biaxially pre-stretched polymer substrate and by controlling the relaxation of the pre-strains in a particular order, graphene films can be crumpled into tailored self-organized hierarchical structures that mimic superhydrophobic leaves. The approach enables us to fabricate large-area conductive coatings and electrodes showing superhydrophobicity, high transparency, and tunable wettability and transmittance. We also demonstrate that crumpled graphene-polymer laminates can be used as artificial-muscle actuators.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Surfaces, Coatings and Films

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b9100a04dcabca3c5a759d7b5bf7f9fa221653c6

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Citations in the corpus

Soft materials in neuroengineering for hard problems in neuroscience. (2015, background): “Similar strategies apply equally well tomany othermaterials, including graphene, as illustrated in Figure 2D (Zang et al., 2013).”
Mechanics of stretchable batteries and supercapacitors (2015, background): “For example, the complex morphology and failure of ridged (or crumpled) pattern [25,47,67] formed with a relative large uniaxial (or biaxial) strain (e.”
Flexible and Stretchable Electronics Paving the Way for Soft Robotics (2014, positive): “(A) Dielectric elastomer being actuated by highly crumpled and stretchable graphene nanomembrane.(68) (B) Temperature-sensitive hydrogels being locally actuated by compliant electrodes working as microheaters.”