Wei Jiacheng, Saharudin Mohd Shahneel, Vo Thuc, Inam Fawad
Department of Mechanical and Construction Engineering, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK.
R Soc Open Sci. 2017 Oct 11;4(10):170778. doi: 10.1098/rsos.170778. eCollection 2017 Oct.
It is generally recognized that dimethylformamide (DMF) and ethanol are good media to uniformly disperse graphene, and therefore have been used widely in the preparation of epoxy/graphene nanocomposites. However, as a solvent to disperse graphene, dichlorobenzene (DCB) has not been fully realized by the polymer community. Owing to high values of the dispersion component () of the Hildebrand solubility parameter, DCB is considered as a suitable solvent for homogeneous graphene dispersion. Therefore, epoxy/graphene nanocomposites have been prepared for the first time with DCB as a dispersant; DMF and ethanol have been chosen as the reference. The colloidal stability, mechanical properties, thermogravimetric analysis, dynamic mechanical analysis and scanning electron microscopic images of nanocomposites have been obtained. The results show that with the use of DCB, the tensile strength of graphene has been improved from 64.46 to 69.32 MPa, and its flexural strength has been increased from 97.17 to 104.77 MPa. DCB is found to be more effective than DMF and ethanol for making stable and homogeneous graphene dispersion and composites.
人们普遍认为，二甲基甲酰胺（DMF）和乙醇是均匀分散石墨烯的良好介质，因此已广泛用于制备环氧/石墨烯纳米复合材料。然而，作为一种分散石墨烯的溶剂，二氯苯（DCB）尚未被聚合物领域充分认识。由于希尔德布兰德溶解度参数的分散分量（）值较高，DCB被认为是用于均匀分散石墨烯的合适溶剂。因此，首次以DCB作为分散剂制备了环氧/石墨烯纳米复合材料；选择DMF和乙醇作为参考。获得了纳米复合材料的胶体稳定性、力学性能、热重分析、动态力学分析和扫描电子显微镜图像。结果表明，使用DCB后，石墨烯的拉伸强度从64.46MPa提高到69.32MPa，弯曲强度从97.17MPa提高到104.77MPa。发现DCB在制备稳定且均匀的石墨烯分散体和复合材料方面比DMF和乙醇更有效。
