A Cut-Resistant and Highly Restorable Graphene Foam.

High-pressure resistant and multidirectional compressible materials enable various applications but are often hindered by structure-derived collapse and weak elasticity. Here, a super-robust graphene foam with ladder shape microstructure capable of withstanding high pressure is presented. The multioriented ladder arrays architecture of the foam, consisting of thousands of identically sized square spaces, endow it with a great deal of elastic units.

Ultrasensitive Pressure Sensor Based on an Ultralight Sparkling Graphene Block.

Herein, we develop a supersensitive pressure sensor based on a fully air-bubbled ultralight graphene block through a simple sparkling strategy. The obtained sparkling graphene block (SGB) exhibits excellent elasticity even at 95% compressive strain and rebounds a steel ball with an ultrafast recovery speed (∼1085 mm s). Particularly, the SGB-based sensor reveals a record pressure sensitivity of 229.

Vertically Aligned Graphene Sheets Membrane for Highly Efficient Solar Thermal Generation of Clean Water.

Efficient utilization of solar energy for clean water is an attractive, renewable, and environment friendly way to solve the long-standing water crisis. For this task, we prepared the long-range vertically aligned graphene sheets membrane (VA-GSM) as the highly efficient solar thermal converter for generation of clean water. The VA-GSM was prepared by the antifreeze-assisted freezing technique we developed, which possessed the run-through channels facilitating the water transport, high light absorption capacity for excellent photothermal transduction, and the extraordinary stability in rigorous conditions.

Solution-Processed Ultraelastic and Strong Air-Bubbled Graphene Foams.

Solution-processed ultraelastic graphene foams are prepared via a convenient air-bubble-promoted synthesis. These foams can dissipate external compression through the ordered interconnecting graphene network between the bubbles without causing a local fracture and thus reliably show compressive stress of 5.4 MPa at a very high strain of 99%, setting a new benchmark for solution-processed graphene foams.

Superelastic, Macroporous Polystyrene-Mediated Graphene Aerogels for Active Pressure Sensing.

Three-dimensional (3D) graphene-based polymer/graphene aerogels with excellent mechanical properties are crucial for broad applications. The creation of such polymer/graphene aerogels remains challenging because of the poor dispersion and compatibility of polymer within the graphene matrix. By using the freezing-directed assembly of graphene under the assistance of surfactant, 3D macroporous polystyrene/graphene aerogels (MPS-GAs) with lightweight, superelastivity (80 % strain), high strength (80 kPa), and good electrical properties have been achieved in this study.

Re-shaping graphene hydrogels for effectively enhancing actuation responses.

The development of actuation-enabled materials is important for smart devices and systems. Among them, graphene with outstanding electric, thermal, and mechanical properties holds great promise as a new type of stimuli-responsive material. In this study, we developed a re-shaping strategy to construct structure-controlled graphene hydrogels for highly enhanced actuation responses.

Spontaneous formation of Cu2O-g-C3N4 core-shell nanowires for photocurrent and humidity responses.

The assembly of low dimensional g-C3N4 structures in a geometrically well-defined fashion and the complexation of g-C3N4 with other materials are the main approaches to construct fancy structures for special functions. While high temperature was often indispensable for the preparation process, the realization of room temperature assembly of the low dimensional g-C3N4 and the preparation of g-C3N4-based semiconductor composites will provide many additional advantages for new functional materials and applications. Herein, the unique cuprous oxide (Cu2O)-graphitic carbon nitrides (g-C3N4) core-shell nanowires with highly hierarchical sharp edges on the surface have been prepared by a spontaneous reduction and assembly approach based on oxygen-functional g-C3N4 (O-functional g-C3N4) at room temperature.

Three-dimensional multichannel aerogel of carbon quantum dots for high-performance supercapacitors.

A three-dimensional (3D) carbon quantum dot (CQD) aerogel has been prepared by in situ assembling CQDs in the sol-gel polymerization of resorcinol (R) and formaldehyde (F) and subsequently pyrolyzing the formed CQD gel. Compared to the supercapacitor based on the CQD-free aerogel, the supercapacitor fabricated with the CQD aerogel showed 20-fold higher specific capacitance (294.7 F g(-1) at the current density of 0.