Hybrid film of chemically modified graphene and vapor-phase-polymerized PEDOT for electronic nose applications

A hybrid of graphene and conducting polymer holds great potential as the active materials for high performance chemical sensor application. In this work, a thin hybrid film of reduced graphene oxide (RG-O) and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) was fabricated by means of vapor phase polymerization and explored as active material for chemical sensors. The chemical sensors based on hybrid film of RG-O and PEDOT are capable of detecting electrical signals caused by the absorption of trace levels of different analyte vapors with high sensitivity, selectivity and fast response.     

Tubular graphene architectures at the macroscopic scale: fabrication and properties

Specific graphene architectures at the macroscopic scale are paramount for exploring new functions and practical uses of graphene. In this study, macroscopic, freestanding, and tubular graphene (TG) architectures were successfully fabricated through a versatile and robust process based on the annealing of cellulose acetate (CA) on Ni templates. These TG architectures can be obtained as woven tubes with diameters of approximately 50 μm; they possess high graphitic crystallinity, strong electrical conductivity, and favorable corrosion resistance. The effects of processing parameters, such as annealing temperature, annealing time, and amount of CA, on the graphene properties of these architectures were investigated and are discussed in this paper. The graphene properties were characterized through field emission scanning electron microscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, four-point probe resistivity, and electrochemical measurements.     

Synthesis of highly concentrated suspension of chemically converted graphene in organic solvents: Effect of temperature on the extent of reduction and dispersibility

We report the effect of temperature on the extent of graphene oxide reduction by hydrazine and the dispersibility of the resulting chemically converted graphene (CCG) in polar organic solvents. The extent of graphene oxide reduction at high temperatures was only slightly higher than at low temperatures (30–50 °C), while the dispersibility of the resulting CCG in organic solvents decreased markedly with increasing temperature. The low dispersibility of CCGs prepared at high temperatures was greatly affected by reduction and influenced by the formation of an irreversible agglomerate of CCG at high temperatures. The reduction of graphene oxide at low temperatures is necessary to prepare highly dispersible CCG in organic solvents. CCG prepared at 30 °C is dispersible in N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone concentrations as high as 0.71 mg/mL. The free-standing paper made of this CCG possessed an electrical conductivity of more than 22,000 S/m, one of the highest values ever reported.     

A numerical scheme based on compact integrated-RBFs and Adams–Bashforth/Crank–Nicolson algorithms for diffusion and unsteady fluid flow problems

This paper presents a high-order approximation scheme based on compact integrated radial basis function (CIRBF) stencils and second-order Adams–Bashforth/Crank–Nicolson algorithms for solving time-dependent problems in one and two space dimensions. We employ CIRBF stencils, where the RBF approximations are locally constructed through integration and expressed in terms of nodal values of the function and its derivatives, to discretise the spatial derivatives in the governing equation. We adopt the Adams–Bashforth and Crank–Nicolson algorithms, which are second-order accurate, to discretise the temporal derivatives. The performance of the proposed scheme is investigated numerically through the solution of several test problems, including heat transfer governed by the diffusion equation, shock wave propagation and shock-like solution governed by the Burgers' equation, and torsionally oscillating lid-driven cavity flow governed by the Navier–Stokes equation in the primitive variables. Numerical experiments show that the proposed scheme is stable and high-order accurate in reference to the exact solution of analytic test problems and achieves a good agreement with published results for other test problems.