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Direct fabrication of carbon nanotube-graphene hybrid films by a blown bubble method

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Abstract

Hybridization of carbon nanotubes (CNT) with graphene provides a promising means of integrating the attributes of both materials, thereby enabling widespread application. Here, we present a method to directly assemble hybrid CNT-graphene films by a blown bubble method combined with selective substrate annealing. We use polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) as the polymeric matrix to blow bubbles containing self-assembled multi-walled CNT arrays, and then transform the bubble film into a CNT-graphene hybrid film by thermal annealing on a Cu substrate; PMMA serves as the carbon source for growing single to few-layer graphene among the CNT network until a continuously hybridized structure is formed. Compared to the bare (non-hybridized) CNT networks, the hybrid films exhibit improved electrical conductivity and structural integrity. Our method also enables the fabrication of a multi-walled CNT-Si solar cell, which has high power conversion efficiency, through the assembly of hybrid CNT-graphene structures.

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Article Open access 09 February 2016

Md. Sajibul Alam Bhuyan, Md. Nizam Uddin, … Sayed Shafayat Hossain

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, P. R. China

    Shiting Wu, Enzheng Shi, Wenjing Xu & Anyuan Cao

  2. College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Yanbing Yang & Xinyang Li

Authors
  1. Shiting Wu
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  2. Enzheng Shi
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  3. Yanbing Yang
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  4. Wenjing Xu
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  5. Xinyang Li
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  6. Anyuan Cao
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Correspondence to Anyuan Cao.

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Wu, S., Shi, E., Yang, Y. et al. Direct fabrication of carbon nanotube-graphene hybrid films by a blown bubble method. Nano Res. 8, 1746–1754 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-014-0679-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-014-0679-5

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