Engineering innovation in graphene nanocomposites for consumer product and packaging applications

聚合物纳米复合材料（一种含有纳米级填充材料的塑料）的潜在应用领域从航空航天和汽车工业扩展到医疗和消费品。这种纳米复合材料在结构和功能材料性能方面都提供了令人兴奋的阶跃变化，因为与含有玻璃或碳纤维填料的传统复合材料相比，纳米填料和聚合物之间的界面面积大了几个数量级。石墨烯有望成为最终的纳米填料，具有出色的，往往是无与伦比的电子，机械和热性能。然而，由于缺乏对材料和分散体在熔融条件下如何表现的理解，迄今为止尚未实现或实施真正的商业应用。该项目将致力于解决这些问题，以开发一种大批量、低成本的石墨烯工程技术，使石墨烯纳米复合材料在消费品中的独特结构特性能够商业化。消费品应用是该项目的重点，因为它们是新技术的早期采用者，并为测试新开发提供了理想的市场。熔融加工在决定最终消费品的性能方面至关重要。石墨烯纳米填料和聚合物链之间的可比长度尺度为复合材料配方和加工提供了新的挑战：强流动影响聚合物链的拉伸以及纳米填料的有序、取向和分散。通过将工艺工程技术与化学和物理科学的新知识和方法相结合来控制这些纳米级现象，为实现石墨烯纳米复合材料的商业潜力提供了一个平台：增强的机械，抗静电和阻隔性能将通过更好的产品性能和延长的产品寿命而给消费者带来好处，并且通过消耗和运输更少的原材料而给商业和环境带来好处。工业合作伙伴宝洁公司（P&G），一家全球消费品公司;戴森，一家国内家电技术公司;和达勒姆石墨烯科学（DGS），一家大型石墨烯生产商将直接与学术合作伙伴一起在石墨烯复合材料的配方，加工和原型设计中发挥最大的影响力。

The potential areas for applications of polymer nanocomposites (a plastic containing a nanometre scale filler material) extend from aerospace and automotive industries to medical and consumer products. Such nanocomposites offer exciting step changes in both structural and functional material performance because the interfacial area between the nanofiller and polymer is greater by orders of magnitude when compared to traditional composites containing glass or carbon fibre filler. Graphene promises to be the ultimate nanofiller having outstanding and often unsurpassed electronic, mechanical and thermal properties. However, to date true commercial applications have yet to be realised or implemented due to lack of understanding in how the material and dispersions behave under melt conditions. This project will tackle these issues head-on to develop a high-volume, low-cost graphene engineering technology that will enable commercialisation of the unique structural properties of graphene nanocomposites in consumer products.Consumer product applications are the focus of this project as they are early adopters of new technology and offer an ideal market for testing new developments. Melt processing is crucial in determining the performance of the final consumer product. The comparable length-scales between graphene nanofillers and the polymer chains provide a new challenge for composite formulation and processing: strong flows impact the stretching of polymer chains and the ordering, orientation and dispersion of the nanofiller. Control of these nanoscale phenomena by combining process-engineering technologies with new knowledge and methodologies from the chemical and physical sciences provides a platform for realising the commercial potential of graphene nanocomposites: enhanced mechanical, anti-static and barrier properties would deliver consumer benefits through better product performance and extended product life and business and environmental benefits through less raw material being consumed and transported. The industrial partners Procter and Gamble (P&G), a global consumer goods company; Dyson, a domestic appliance technology company; and Durham Graphene Science (DGS), a large-scale producer of graphene will work directly alongside the academic partners in the formulation, processing and prototyping of the graphene composites to deliver maximum impact in potential new consumer products.