Fabrication of 3D monolithic graphene foam/polycaprolactone porous nanocomposites for bioapplications
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Fabrication of 3D monolithic graphene foam/ polycaprolactone porous nanocomposites for bioapplications Neda Bahremandi Tolou1, Hamidreza Salimijazi1,*, Theodoros Dikonimos2, Giuliana Faggio3, Giacomo Messina3, Alessio Tamburrano4, Annalisa Aurora2, and Nicola Lisi2,*
1
Department of Materials Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran ENEA Casaccia, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Rome, Italy 3 Department of Information Engineering, Infrastructure and Sustainable Energy (DIIES), Università Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria, Reggio Calabria, Italy 4 Department of Astronautical, Electrical and Energy Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy 2
Received: 31 August 2020
ABSTRACT
Accepted: 17 November 2020
Aiming at the production of light, porous, conductive, biosafe composites, in this paper we are presenting a novel fabrication method for monolithic, threedimensional (3D) graphene foam (GF)/porous polymer composites. The synthesis adopts a novel process architecture by using Ni foam templates in an inductive heating chemical vapor deposition growth process, and by removing Ni chemically while retaining graphene integrity by the reversible application of cyclododecane (CD); finally, nondestructive coating procedures with polycaprolactone (PCL) solutions have been developed. The composites can be optimized to enhance electrical conduction, flexibility and mechanical properties, while mixing PCL and CD allows to coat the GF with a novel mesoporous polymer coating. By tuning the GF properties, the typical electrical resistance of the 3D forms can be reduced to a few 10 s of Ohms, values that are maintained after the PCL coatings. The current study achieved a GF fraction ranging between 1 and 7.3 wt%, with even the lower graphene content composites showing acceptable electrical and mechanical properties. The properties of these conductive 3D-GF/PCL composites are in line with the requirements for applications in the field of nerve tissue engineering.
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The Author(s) 2020
Handling Editor: Chris Cornelius.
Address correspondence to E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-020-05596-1
J Mater Sci
GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Introduction Graphene and graphene-based materials are currently under study for many different applications in diverse fields such as batteries [1], solar cells [2], corrosion prevention [3], chemical sensors [4] and water purification [5]; among these, fields biomedicine and tissue engineering [6] show excellent premises. The addition of nanosized carbonaceous fillers, including graphene family nanomaterials, to polymers may lead to a large enhancement in mechanical, conductive and barrier properties over the pristine polymers [7–9]. Some methods were developed to produce graphene/polymer composite scaffold with complex shapes [10, 11]: Focusing on biomedical applications, a graphene/poly (lactic-coglycolic acid) composite containing 60 wt% graphene was prepared as a bioink
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