Morphological, Vibrational and Thermal Properties of Confined Graphene Nanosheets in an Individual Polymeric Nanochannel by Electrospinning

Abstract

Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a two dimension hexagonal lattice. It appeared very quickly that this exceptional material had truly outstanding electronic, mechanical, thermal and optical properties. The main goal of this work is the confinement of graphene nanosheets in an individual polymeric nanofiber and the study of their vibrational and thermal properties in one dimension. After their preparation, graphene sheets were mixed with Polyethylene oxide (PEO) solution to be electrospinned. The synthesized nanofibers were systematically investigated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy measurements and their morphology and structure were characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM), optical microscope and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and finally thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) to check G/PEO mass ratio and interactions to prove the capability of PEO to be a good envelope for the confinement and the alignment of graphene nanosheets in a one dimensional system.