Synergistic toughening of bioinspired artificial nacre by polystyrene grafted graphene oxide

Abstract

A biologically inspired, multilayer laminate structural design is deployed in composite films of polystyrene (PS) grafted graphene oxide (GO) synthesized by a Ce(IV)/HNO₃ redox system in aqueous solution. Artificial hybrid films are fabricated using a vacuum-assisted filtration macroscopic assembly method, using nacre as the structural model, GO as the inorganic building blocks and PS as glue. The resulting multilayer structure and the mechanical properties of the nanopaper were studied by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and stress–strain measurements. The resulting multilayer GO–PS films with low polymer content (<15 vol%) show greatly enhanced mechanical properties compared to pure GO films. It is interesting that the mechanical properties of the nacre-like films can be varied with the volume fraction of the polymer.