Hydrocarbon‐Derived Graphene Nanoparticles and Their Networked Morphology

• Published in: Advanced engineering materials 2024-11
• Main Authors: Zhang, Yufan, Sarmah, Anubhav, Banavath, Ramu, Arole, Kailash, Deshpande, Sayyam, Cao, Huaixuan, Dasari, Smita S., Yollin, Paul, Cook, Dylan, Parliman, Richard W., Peat, Stephnie, Kosmoski, Joseph V., Johnson, Evan C., Green, Micah J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1438-1656; 1527-2648
• DOI: 10.1002/adem.202402236

Over the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in the industrial production of carbon nanomaterials. Many high‐quality nanomaterials require the use of metal‐based catalysts, which in turn raise production costs, require postprocessing, and limit scaleup. Herein, novel industrially produced graphene nanoparticles that are derived from hydrocarbon streams via a scalable catalyst‐free process in a proprietary reactor are analyzed. The resulting carbon nanomaterials exhibit a unique morphology, featuring nanoscale building blocks in microscale networks. The nanomaterials display exceptional performance in several applications due to their prenetworked structure: These carbon nanomaterials are promising as conductive additives for supercapacitor electrodes, which exhibit superior performance compared to common commercial additives (61% capacitance improvement at 2 A g −1 ), and as electrochemical sensors, with a sensitivity of 162 μA m m −1 cm −2 for nitrite ion sensing. Moreover, these carbon nanomaterials reinforce thermoset and thermoplastic composites, with tensile strength enhancement of 238% at 5 wt% filler for epoxy, superior to prior reports for carbon nanotubes.