High-performance graphene sheets for engineering high-tech materials

Today, the common engineering solution to manufacture carbon fiber reinforced plastic composite materials is based on cross-plied carbon fibers in a polymer resin requiring high temperature cure. In contrast, researchers now have demonstrated cross-linked graphene sheets that are manufacturable from graphene platelets, which are resin-free, processable at low temperature, and contain less than 10 wt.% additives. This advance provides a universal strategy for converting inexpensive graphene platelets into high performance polymer-free graphene sheets for the development of next-generation lightweight multifunctional materials.