Multifunctional Macroassembled Graphene Nanofilms with High Crystallinity

Abstract

A "cooling-contraction" method to separate large-area (up to 4.2 cm in lateral size) graphene oxide (GO)-assembled films (of nanoscale thickness) from substrates is reported. Heat treatment at 3000 °C of such free-standing macroscale films yields highly crystalline "macroassembled graphene nanofilms" (nMAGs) with 16-48 nm thickness. These nMAGs present tensile strength of 5.5-11.3 GPa (with ≈3 µm gauge length), electrical conductivity of 1.8-2.1 MS m^-1 , thermal conductivity of 2027-2820 W m^-1 K^-1 , and carrier relaxation time up to ≈23 ps. As a demonstration application, an nMAG-based sound-generator shows a 30 µs response and sound pressure level of 89 dB at 1 W cm^-2 . A THz metasurface fabricated from nMAG has a light response of 8.2% for 0.159 W mm^-2 and can detect down to 0.01 ppm of glucose. The approach provides a straightforward way to form highly crystallized graphene nanofilms from low-cost GO sheets.