The preparation of the poly(vinyl alcohol)/graphene nanocomposites with low percolation threshold and high electrical conductivity by using the large-area reduced graphene oxide sheets

Abstract

We report a method to prepare the poly(vinyl alcohol)/reduced graphene oxide (PVA/rGO) nanocomposites with low percolation threshold and high electrical conductivity by using the large-area reduced graphene oxide (LrGO) sheets. The large-area graphene oxide (LGO) sheets are expected to overlap better with each other and form the continuous GO network in PVA matrix than small-area graphene oxide (SGO). During the thermal reduction process, the LGO sheets are easily restored and improve the electrical conductivity of nanocomposites due to their low damage level of conjugate-structure. As a result, the percolation threshold of PVA/LrGO nanocomposites is ~0.189 wt% lower than present reports (0.5~0.7 wt%). At the LrGO content of 0.7 wt%, the electrical conductivity of PVA/LrGO nanocomposites reaches 6.3•10–3 S/m. Besides that, this method only takes 15~30 min to reduce the PVA/GO nanocomposites effectively.

Keywords

• Polymer composites
• large area rGO
• thermal reduction
• electrical conductivity
• poly(vinyl alcohol)