Graphene-alumina nanostructured hybrid: synthesis with use dodecylamine and physicochemical properties

Abstract

Combination of sol–gel and sonochemical techniques is suggested for producing a nanostructured graphene–alumina hybrid, which is a promising raw material for manufacturing fine-grained ceramics. This study focuses on the use of dodecylamine both in the sol–gel synthesis of Al-containing particles and in sonochemical graphene exfoliation. It has been shown that, when forming graphene–alumina composite in a reaction mixture of Al-containing sol and graphene suspension, graphene sheets take part as a template in the formation of a hybrid structure. Graphene sheets orient sol particles on their surface due to van der Waals interaction and control growth and direction of oligomeric gel chains. The graphene sheets limit the growth of Al-containing particles, which leads to an increase in the specific surface of the hybrid as compared to an alumina powder sourced from the same sol. The proposed approach enables the preparation of chemically homogeneous composite nanopowders with uniform distribution of components.

Keywords:

• Hybrid nanostructures
• graphene–alumina hybrid
• sol–gel
• sonochemical graphene exfoliation
• dodecylamine
• oxygen-free graphene

Acknowledgement

The synthetic part of the work was carried out according to government assignment No. 075-00947-20-00.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

Elena A. Trusova, Alex N. Kirichenko and Asya M. Afzal thank Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR, Grant No: 19-03-00554_а) for financially supporting the work.