Large area graphene deposition on hydrophobic surfaces, flexible textiles, glass fibers, 3D structures, and adhesion of graphene layer
in: Coatings (2019)
Graphene and its derivatives have many superior electrical, thermal, mechanical, chemical, and structural properties, and promised for many applications. One of the issues of the scalable applications is lack of a simple, reliable method, which allows deposit well-ordered monolayer using low-cost graphene flakes, onto target substrates with different surface properties. Another issue is the adhesion of the deposited graphene thin film, and had not been well investigated yet. Following our former finding of a double self-assembly (DSA) process for efficient deposition of a monolayer of graphene flakes (MGFs), in this work we demonstrated that the DSA-process can be applied even on very challenging samples including highly hydrophobic polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), flexible textiles, complex 3D objects and thin glass fibers. Additionally, the adhesion of the graphene flakes on the flat glass substrate was tested by repeatedly peel of the MGFs with scotch tapes. It shows that there is no more detachment of graphene flakes after 3 to 4 times peels, and most of the graphene flakes stay on the glass. These findings may trigger many large-scale applications of low-cost graphene feedstocks and other 2D materials.