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Producing Conductive Graphene–Nanocellulose Paper in One-pot

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Abstract

This paper reports a facile one-pot method to produce graphene oxide nanocellulose composite (GNCC) that was subsequently reduced using l-ascorbic acid to form a conductive paper (CP). Cellulose fibers were directly added into the reaction system during graphite exfoliation using sulfuric acid to produce cellulose nano- or microfibrils through acid hydrolysis along with mechancial mixing. FTIR and Raman analyses indicated that reduction using l-ascorbic acid efficiently produced a well-deoxygenated CP with high conductivity of 116.3 ± 1.5 S m−1 at 20% graphene oxide loading. Furthermore, the presence of cellulose nano- or microfibrils improved CP thermal stability with onset degradation Tonset of 319 °C as well as mechanical properties with a specific tensile of 19 N mg−1. This one-pot method substantially simplified the GNCC production process and has practical significance.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the financial support from US Forest Service, USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Competitive (Grant No. 2011-67009-20056), and the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) that made the visiting appointments of Wang and Ma at the Forest Products Laboratory possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Pulp and Paper Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China

    Ruibin Wang, Qianli Ma & Rendang Yang

  2. Forest Products Laboratory, U. S. Forest Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Madison, WI, 53736, USA

    Ruibin Wang, Qianli Ma & J. Y. Zhu

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Egineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53705, USA

    Huilong Zhang & Zhengqiang Ma

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  1. Ruibin Wang
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  2. Qianli Ma
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  3. Huilong Zhang
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  4. Zhengqiang Ma
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Correspondence to J. Y. Zhu.

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Wang, R., Ma, Q., Zhang, H. et al. Producing Conductive Graphene–Nanocellulose Paper in One-pot. J Polym Environ 27, 148–157 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10924-018-1330-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10924-018-1330-4

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