Mohadeseh Madadi Jaberi

Shahid Chamran University, Iran

Title: Freeze Casting at ambient pressure: a step to facilitate the process of fabricating porous materials such as graphene-CNTs aerogels

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Biography

Mohadeseh Madadi Jaberi is an active researcher in the field of nanotechnology whose specialty lies in fabrication of 2D and 3D materials. She received her Masters’ from Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz in Solid-State Physics in 2019. She was also the laboratory assistant who taught physics laboratory courses to bachelor students.

Mohadeseh currently serves as technology and innovation expert at Science and Technology Park (STP). She is responsible for supervising research activities in the field of micro- and nano-products. Besides she provides R&D groups with the necessary assistance to develop novel materials and products in the field of nanotechnology. Mohadeseh has been involved in many national and international collaborations, including International Congress of Chemical Engineering and Petroleum Industry Students and 14th conference on Condensed Matter

Abstract

Having unique electrical properties and high compressibility, ultra-light graphene aerogels (~10 mg/cm3) have found many applications in the fields of energy dissipation, conductive sensors and oil absorbers. There are several methods to produce graphene aerogels which are costly and require special laboratory equipment, meanwhile ambient pressure drying will be a desirable alternative that obviate the need of special tools if preserving the physical structure is possible. The key is ice templating or freeze casting through unidirectional freezing which is applied to produce porous materials at ambient pressure. Meanwhile, carbon nanotubes are known as advanced materials with extremely high elastic modulus, greater than 1 TPa, used as reinforcement agent in nanocomposites. The way of reaping the benefits of graphene and carbon nanotubes properties is using them simultaneously as a composite. In this research, graphene aerogels and graphene/single-walled carbon nanotubes (G/SWCNTs) nanocomposite aerogels were produced by freeze casting at ambient pressure without the need for vacuum apparatus. The mechanical experiments showed that both aerogels can withstand a strain up to 90%, but generally, G/SWCNTs aerogels have greater elasticity than the pure graphene aerogels. It was found that graphene aerogels had better electrical conductivity and a threshold voltage of approximately 2 V, below which no electrical current could be established. The electrical current is linearly proportional to the stress. Absorption capacity of crude oil, gasoline, edible oil and ethanol by graphene and G/SWCNTs aerogels were measured and found that the gasoline was sponged up the most by both aerogels. Moreover, the highest absorption capacity of graphene and G/SWCNTs aerogels were measured at 85.5 gg-1 and 30.5 gg-1, respectively.