Zirconia-Nanoparticle-Reinforced Morphology-Engineered Graphene-Based Foams

Dibyendu Chakravarty; Chandra Sekhar Tiwary; Leonardo Dantas Machado; Gustavo Brunetto; Soumya Vinod; Ram Manohar Yadav; Douglas S Galvao; Shrikant V Joshi; Govindan Sundararajan; Pulickel M Ajayan

doi:10.1002/adma.201502409

Zirconia-Nanoparticle-Reinforced Morphology-Engineered Graphene-Based Foams

Adv Mater. 2015 Aug 19;27(31):4534-43. doi: 10.1002/adma.201502409. Epub 2015 Jul 14.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, 77005, USA.
² International Advanced Research Center for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), Balapur P. O., Hyderabad, 500005, India.
³ Instituto de Fisica 'Gleb Wataghin', Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Unicamp, CP 6165, 13083-970, Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
⁴ Department of Physics, VSSD College, Kanpur, 208002, India.

PMID: 26171602
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201502409

Abstract

The morphology of graphene-based foams can be engineered by reinforcing them with nanocrystalline zirconia, thus improving their oil-adsorption capacity; This can be observed experimentally and explained theoretically. Low zirconia fractions yield flaky microstructures where zirconia nanoparticles arrest propagating cracks. Higher zirconia concentrations possess a mesh-like interconnected structure where the degree of coiling is dependant on the local zirconia content.

Keywords: MD simulations; density functional theory calculations; graphene composite foams; oil adsorption; zirconia nanoparticles.