SMALL-ANGLE NEUTRON SCATTERING CHARACTERIZATION OF GRAPHENE/Al NANOCOMPOSITES

摘要

The results of a Small-Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) study are presented, aimed at the investigation of structural and morphological characteristics of graphene sheets in hot pressed graphene/Al nanocomposites. SANS gives an average conformation of graphene sheets in the nanocomposites, and scattering upon length scales from 125nm down to approximately 1 nm indicates scattering from local agglomerates of graphene sheets with mass fractal dimension changing from 1.4 to 1.9, and local structure of surfaces with the fractal dimension changing from 2.8 to 2.1. The diameter of local structure of graphene sheets that consists of plate-like objects, mostly containing folded, crumpled, aggregated sheets, is about 76 nm. These findings open up a new perspective in characterizing two-dimension materials as nano-scale reinforcing phases in composites using small-angle scattering techniques.