Fluid Interface Templated Assembly of Graphite Oxide Sheets

摘要

Graphite oxide (GO) sheets are promising materials which have been attracting the interest of both the scientific and the industrial community due to their unique properties: composed of single or few layers of carbon, they retain the high mechanical properties and in part the electrical conductivity of pure carbon. Their limited thickness gives rise to optical trasparency and their 2-dimensional structure allows to design microstructured systems with extremely high surface area. Such properties make GO sheets a good candidate for the design of complex high-performing materials, such as ultra-light and transparent conductors or conductive foams. In order to fully exploit the properties of graphite oxide sheets, it is crucial to have a good control over the final microstructure of the system. Given the high surface area of sheets, fluid-fluid interfaces represent in this sense a valuable and effective tool for assembling such 2-dimensional particles. In the present work we investigate the assembly of GO sheets at a water-oil interface. We demonstrate the high stability of such assemblies in time and their excellent mechanical properties, as measured by interfacial shear and dilation rheology. Furthermore we show the exceptional properties of GO sheets as emulsion stabilizer and indicate a possible route to produce 3D complex structures through interface-driven assembly.