There is great interest in exploiting van der Waals gaps in layered materials as confinement reaction vessels to template the synthesis of new nanosheet structures. The gallery spaces in multilayer graphene oxide, for example, can intercalate hydrated metal ions that assemble into metal oxide films during thermal oxidation of the sacrificial graphene template. This approach offers limited control of structure, however, and does not typically lead to 2D atomic-scale growth of anisotropic platelet crystals, but rather arrays of simple particles directionally sintered into porous sheets. Here we demonstrate a new graphene-directed assembly route that yields fully-dense, space-filling films of tiled metal oxide platelet crystals with tessellated structures. The method relies on colloidal engineering to produce a printable “metallized graphene ink” with accurate control in metal loading, grain size/porosity, composition and micro/nano-morphologies, and is capable to achieve higher metal-carbon ratio than is achievable by intercalation methods. These tiled structures are sufficiently robust to create free standing papers, complex microtextured films, 3D shapes, and metal oxide replicas of natural biotextures.

Graphene inks as versatile templates for printing tiled metal oxide crystalline films

256th National Meeting (2018)

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