Making even lighter carbon fiber composites with graphene?


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Avalon
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Hello. Carbon fiber composites are incredibly lightweight and strong, as well as resistant to chemical damage and can have wide application, which made me a big fan of it. However as science progresses better materials are discovered and one the most interesting is graphene. Graphene has many amazing qualities such as having the best weight to strength ratio, is transparent when thin, has excellent thermal and electrical super conductivity, it could make better camera sensors, batteries, lights, computers and so on. Problem is that it‘s very rare new material on the market and is still hard to manufacture in large quantities. But just 1% of it in addition to concrete could make it 35% stronger. Some applies to it‘s powder being added into plastics and resin to make carbon fiber composites with unmatched weight to strength ratio. There is company Dassi that already makes carbon fiber with graphene bicycle frames that can weigh just 350 grams. So I thought it would be great to make for example a stronger carbon fiber case for phones which also could dissipate heat well which is bad for battery, camera sensor and other components. I noticed few companies on Ebay are selling graphene powders however it‘s pretty pricey at least now. Moreover there was an article about testing of commercial graphene and most samples were of bad quality - most contained less than 10% graphene flakes, with only one sample containing more than 40%.
Although it may be possible to make own cheaper graphene in large amounts but older methods are problematic. One of the interesting newer methods is Joule heating of any high carbon containing material (yes even trash plastic) in quartz tube to 3000 degrees of Celcius by applying capacitor high current electricity for seconds to break all bonds. Carbon then naturally assembles into graphene structure and other sublimed materials escape as gas, wolla you get treasure material. The bigger graphene flakes the stronger the composite can be.
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-lab-trash-valuable-graphene.html

Also an important factor is what type of carbon fiber and resin is used. Some carbon fibers can have better tensile strength or stiffness specs. Less dense resins can shave off weight additionally but is it worth over using regular transparent epoxy to make carbon fiber composites with graphene? It‘s important that it wouldn't be too toxic to breath and work with indoors, preferably crystal clear for wider application.

Edited 4 Years Ago by Avalon
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