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Communication

Cellular Networks www.advmat.de

A Plesiohedral Cellular Network of Graphene Bubbles


for Ultralight, Strong, and Superelastic Materials
Seon Ju Yeo, Min Jun Oh, Hyun Min Jun, Minhwan Lee, Jung Gun Bae, Yeseul Kim,
Kyung Jin Park, Seungwoo Lee, Daeyeon Lee, Byung Mook Weon, Won Bo Lee,
Seok Joon Kwon,* and Pil J. Yoo*

The design of functional materials relies


Advanced materials with low density and high strength impose transforma- on the judicious selection and elaborate
tive impacts in the construction, aerospace, and automobile industries. assembly of building units (BUs) aiming
These materials can be realized by assembling well-designed modular at particular applications. Given that the
building units (BUs) into interconnected structures. This study uses a assembly of BUs spans multiple scales from
the molecular to macroscopic scale, a tai-
hierarchical design strategy to demonstrate a new class of carbon-based,
lored strategy is required to implement the
ultralight, strong, and even superelastic closed-cellular network structures. desired functionalities at different scales.[1]
Here, the BUs are prepared by a multiscale design approach starting from To achieve lightweight yet mechanically
the controlled synthesis of functionalized graphene oxide nanosheets strong and resilient functionality, which is
at the molecular- and nanoscale, leading to the microfluidic fabrication imperative for the development of advanced
materials for construction, aerospace, and
of spherical solid-shelled bubbles at the microscale. Then, bubbles are
automobiles,[2–4] the obvious starting point
strategically assembled into centimeter-scale 3D structures. Subsequently, is to develop mechanically stable and strong
these structures are transformed into self-interconnected and structurally BUs. The conventional approach targeting a
reinforced closed-cellular network structures with plesiohedral cellular units reduced density has concentrated on the fab-
through post-treatment, resulting in the generation of 3D graphene lattices rication of metals and ceramic lattice struc-
with rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb structure at the centimeter-scale. tures using template-directed synthesis.[5–7]
Unfortunately, these methods often require
The 3D graphene suprastructure concurrently exhibits the Young’s modulus
postprocessing and are still far from real-
above 300 kPa while retaining a light density of 7.7 mg cm−3 and sustaining izing cost- and time-effective process.
the elasticity against up to 87% of the compressive strain benefiting from Besides, the fabricated lattice structures
efficient stress dissipation through the complete space-filling closed-cel- are prone to the imposed stress and have
lular network. The method of fabricating the 3D graphene closed-cellular reduced structural recoverability. As a result,
it is highly desirable to further improve the
structure opens a new pathway for designing lightweight, strong, and
mechanical strength and adaptability as well
superelastic materials. as lightweight properties while maintaining
processability and scalability.

Dr. S. J. Yeo, Dr. S. J. Kwon Y. Kim, K. J. Park, Prof. S. Lee, Prof. B. M. Weon, Prof. P. J. Yoo
Nanophotonics Research Center SKKU Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology (SAINT)
Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU)
Seoul 02792, Republic of Korea Suwon 16419, Republic of Korea
E-mail: cheme@kist.re.kr Prof. D. Lee
M. J. Oh, H. M. Jun, Prof. S. Lee, Prof. P. J. Yoo Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
School of Chemical Engineering University of Pennsylvania
Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Suwon 16419, Republic of Korea Prof. B. M. Weon
E-mail: pjyoo@skku.edu School of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering
M. Lee, J. G. Bae, Prof. W. B. Lee Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU)
School of Chemical and Biological Engineering Suwon 16419, Republic of Korea
Institute of Chemical Processes
Seoul National University
Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea
The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article
can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201802997.

DOI: 10.1002/adma.201802997

Adv. Mater. 2018, 30, 1802997 1802997 (1 of 7) © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
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Figure 1. Multiscale design of GO-based microbubble assembly. a) GO, lightly- or heavily-alkylated GOs (L-GO or H-GO) molecular BUs, which are
organized into b) micro-scale spherical solid-shelled bubbles (composed of H-GO nanoplatelets (NPs)) via a microfluidic process. c) The spherical
microbubbles are further assembled into a macro-scale 3D FCC array d) followed by chemical and structural transformation into 3D RDH structures
of rGO. The transformed 3D lattice structures form centimeter-scale plesiohedral closed-cellular structures (CCSs).

Given a BU that is lighter than yet as strong as metal, a well- the resulting structures were complete space-filling closed-cel-
designed bottom-up approach can provide a relatively simple lular foam with rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb (RDH) lattice,
way of fabricating a structured material satisfying the required which can ideally serve as lightweight, strong, and highly adaptable
mechanical strength. Some of the potential BUs demonstrating structured material by virtue of remarkable structural advantages
this property are graphene and its related materials such as over multiple scales. As a result, unprecedented performances
graphene oxide (GO) or reduced GO (rGO) on account of their dis- of structured carbonaceous materials are achieved with a high
tinguished advantages including accessibility to functionalization, Young’s modulus above 300 kPa and ultralow density as low as
strong mechanical stiffness, high elasticity, and cost-effectiveness 7.7 mg cm−3, while securing the superelasticity with intact struc-
in preparation.[8] In particular, structurally regulated 3D porous tural recovery even after applying a compressive strain up to 87%.
graphene-related materials enable the realization of func- For the realization of hierarchically structured materials, it
tionally improved materials in terms of reduced density, high is essential to prepare GO-related BUs taking into account the
surface area, reinforced stiffness, and elasticity.[9–21] These molecular aspect of mechanical properties. Mono- or bilayer GO
materials are mostly prepared from random integration of GO nanosheets have been known to possess a high Young’s modulus
or graphene nanosheets by means of hydro/solvothermal pro- of about 200 GPa.[22] Therefore, the stacked GO platelets are likely
cesses,[9,16] direct freeze-drying,[13,14,19] and sol–gel reactions.[11] to preserve the characteristics of a high elastic modulus. Mean-
Due to random stacking in the course of integration, however, while, the mechanical properties of the GO platelets can also be
pores lack structural ordering. A template-directed chemical tailored by chemical modification of GO nanosheets. For this
vapor deposition (CVD)[10,12] or 3D printing method[17,18,20,21] purpose, GO nanosheets (average width ≈500 nm, see Figure S1,
for the formation of 3D graphene networks could alleviate the Supporting Information) were alkylated via the amide bond for-
processing difficulties in assembling graphene-related mate- mation of carboxylic acid and ring opening amination of epoxide
rials into regular 3D networks. However, multistage, time-con- groups on the surface of GO using carbodiimide cross-linking
suming, and low-yield procedures are inevitable, and most of chemistry[23] and the degree of alkylation can be readily controlled
the materials prepared by 3D printing still lack the uniformity by varying the reaction time to produce lightly- (i.e., L-GO) or
in their unit cell morphologies, which hinders further applica- heavily alkylated GO (i.e., H-GO) (see the detailed characterization
bility. To overcome these hurdles, there is a need for well-defined in Figure S2, Table S1, and Section S1, Supporting Information).
and adaptable strategies that utilize designer BUs of graphene- In order to understand the effect of alkylation on the mechan-
related materials and their assembly at multiple scales. ical properties of GO nanosheets or nanoplatelets, we employed
In this study, we demonstrate a new class of hierarchically struc- molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. For the simulations of
tured material composed of functionalized GOs and their reduced individual GO nanosheet, 5.65 × 6.59 nm2 areas of GO, L-GO,
phase. To cover a wide range of scales in the design hierarchy, GOs and H-GO structures were tested while ignoring defects (see
were carefully modified in the form of alkylated GO nanosheets detailed methods in Supporting Information). For L-GO and
with designated physicochemical and mechanical properties H-GO, alkylamine chains are allowed to adsorb onto the GO
(Figure 1a) to serve as nanoscale BUs with a nanosheet form surface (Figure 2a). We intuited the experimentally deter-
(≈500 nm width, also see the expanded panels of Figure 1b). Next, mined degree of alkylation to define the configurations of L-GO
nanosheets were microfluidically treated to form microscale solid- (i.e., 26.4%) and H-GO (i.e., 86.1%) (detailed in Section S1,
shelled bubbles (≈100 µm diameter, Figure 1b) with excellent size Supporting Information). As a result of the MD simulation in
uniformity and sphericity. Then, the bubbles were assembled into which a single nanosheet of GO, L-GO, and H-GO was elon-
2D or 3D structures (centimeter-scale, Figure 1c) and finally trans- gated at equilibrium in the in-plane direction, the three types
formed into well-defined self-interconnected network structures of GO nanosheets exhibit nearly constant Young’s modulus
(Figure 1d) via thermal reduction. Notably, as a consequence of (E) around 200 GPa, which is mainly due to the in-plane strain
self-interconnection between adjacent domains of microbubbles, being intervened by the planar GO backbone (Figure 2c).

Adv. Mater. 2018, 30, 1802997 1802997 (2 of 7) © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
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Figure 2. Mechanical properties of GO, L-GO, and H-GO BUs. a) Calculated molecular structures of GO, L-GO, and H-GO BUs at equilibrium obtained
using MD simulation. b) Calculated morphology of the overlapped layers of (upper) L-GO and (lower) H-GO NPs. Note that H-GO NPs exhibit deflection,
which is derived by free energy minimization in the course of aggregation. c,d) Calculated mechanical properties (i.e., Young’s modulus (E)) of (c) one layer
and (d) multiple-stacked layers of GO, L-GO, and H-GO BUs obtained using MD simulations. For Ei, GOi, L-GOi, and H-GOi, i denotes 1 for x- and 2 for
y-directions, respectively. Eavg means an arithmetic average of E1 and E2. The insets of (c) and (d) show stress–strain curves of single layer and stacked layers
of GO, L-GO, and H-GO BUs. e) Nanoindentation results for E of thin films composed of GO, L-GO, and H-GO BUs. The inset shows the comparison of
the MD simulation and experimental results with respect to internal porosity (φ) and layer-to-layer distance (d-spacing, cf. d0 denotes d-spacing of GO).

Notably, the alteration of mechanical properties according with values of φ = 0.550, φ = 0.692, and φ = 0.766 for the stacked
to the degree of alkylation becomes prominent when the morphologies of GO, L-GO, and H-GO platelets, respectively
nanosheets are assembled into a stacked form of platelets. First, (inset of Figure 2e and Section S2, Supporting Information).[24]
we allowed a number of L-GO or H-GO nanosheets, and GO From the calculated porosity, we extracted the equilibrium
nanosheets with the pre-defined configurations to be placed in spacing, dS, between the nearest platelets by assuming a simple
3D simulation boxes with the NPT ensemble. The nanosheets 1D relationship of φ = ds/Ds, where DSdS + hf and hf denotes
were further allowed to interact with each other for a long time the thickness of the single platelet. As shown in the inset of
to investigate the stacking behavior. As shown in Figure 2b, Figure 2e, the calculated values of DS relative to that of the
both L-GO and H-GO platelets exhibited a stacked morphology. stacked morphology of GO platelets showed good agreement
Intriguingly, the H-GO platelets exhibited a deflected mor- with the experimentally observed spacings obtained from X-ray
phology in the stacked structure, which could result from the diffraction (Figure S2g, Supporting Information). The stacked
greater number density of alkyl chains on the surface. Alkyl morphology of GOs and alkylated GOs with tunable mechan-
chains on GO nanosheets impose short-range repulsive poten- ical properties would successfully act as BUs at the nanoscale.
tial that not only hinders proximal contact but induces the We then constructed structures at the next level of the hier-
deflection of a GO platelet to minimize the total free energy by archy, namely, the microscale, by employing a microfluidic
introducing additional excluded volume around an individual process to fabricate solid-shelled spherical bubbles.[25,26] In par-
nanosheet, resulting in a difference in the internal porosity. ticular, to secure the stability of dispersed phase of alkylated GOs
Using stacked configurations of GO, L-GO, and H-GO plate- and accordingly to enhance the compatibility with the micro-
lets, we further tested the mechanical properties. As provided fluidic process, H-GO platelets are chosen for the synthesis of
in Figure 2d, it is evident that E of the stacked morphology microsolid bubbles. On the other hand, GO and L-GO platelets
decreases with increasing surface density of alkyl chains. The are excluded for the bubble synthesis due to their immisci-
stacked systems of GO, L-GO, and H-GO platelets indeed bility or partial miscibility in toluene, which eventually results
showed a notable reduction in E (Figure 2e). It should also be in bubble bursting or deformation. The stability of GO solu-
noted that the modulus reduction is an order of magnitude dif- tions in organic solvent depending on the degree of alkylation
ferent when comparing H-GO and GO (i.e., 1.18 vs 10.3 GPa, (H-GO and L-GO) is compared in Figure S4 in the Supporting
Figure S3, Supporting Information). This reduction in the Information. In the process, H-GO platelets are dispersed in an
modulus can be translated into different internal porosities (φ) oil (O, toluene) phase and are sandwiched between a gaseous

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Figure 3. Microscale solid-shelled spherical bubbles. a,b) Optical microscopy (OM) image and schematic illustration of the assembled H-GO NPs
via the microfluidic process, resulting in the formation of ultrastable spherical microbubbles. c) SEM image of the microscale spherical H-GO-shelled
bubbles. d) Measurement of shell thickness of the bubble. e) X-ray nanotomography images of the spherical microbubbles showing the thin-shelled
morphology: (left) 3D reconstructed image and (right) 2D cross-sectional images sliced at different positions. f) Bright- and g) dark-field OM images
of the spherical microbubbles. h) The calculated color hue of thin-shelled bubbles resulting from interference reflectance.

N2 phase (G, inner), and poly(vinyl alcohol)-dispersed aqueous on X-ray nanotomography (Figure 3e and Figure S7, Supporting
(W, outer) phase, finally forming gas-in-oil-in-water (G/O/W) Information; Movie S1, Supporting Information). As the BUs
compound bubbles with controlled size and shell thickness in a at the microscale, spherical bubbles also possess additional
glass capillary microfluidic device (Figure 3a). geometric stiffness due to its convexity.[27] As a result of shape
Due to buoyancy, the collected spherical bubbles are uniformity and intactness of the solid-shelled microbubbles,
suspended at the air–water interface. From the shell, toluene some interesting optical properties are observed, such as inter-
evaporates, and the shell is gradually hardened, which results in ference reflectance (Figure 3f,g).[28] Microscale bubbles with thin
the generation of microscale spherical solid bubbles (Figure 3b). solid-shells can exhibit a colorful reflectance pattern (Figure S8,
Notably, the size of the encapsulated bubbles is virtually invar- Supporting Information, calculated colors from standard red-
iant throughout the solvent evaporation process (Figure S5, Sup- green-blue matching in Figure 3h), which can be observed in the
porting Information). The final morphology of the solid-shelled designated solid angle, Ω, of the detector of a microscope (i.e.,
bubbles at the fully dried state is a spherical bubble with a radius Ω = 2π(1 − cos θ), where θ is the instrumental observation angle
of 50 ± 0.2 µm and a shell thickness of 100 nm (Figure 3c,d and (θ = 8.75°)). It is also notable that the microbubble would exhibit
Figure S6, Supporting Information). Spherically isotropic thin different reflectances by different polar positions due to different
shell morphology is demonstrated by detailed imaging based portions of the inner layer (Figure S9, Supporting Information).

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We further proceeded to construct macroscale (centimeter- structures, it is also expected that the 3D CCS will have strong
scale) 2D and 3D structures for the demonstration of tar- mechanical properties with outstanding elasticity.
geting practical applications. The microfluidic synthetic toolkit To assess their strength, we experimentally measured the
ensures the continuous production of uniform and stable bub- elastic modulus of 3D CCS using displacement-controlled
bles with a high yield (≈1 million ea. 10 min–1) and a wide sur- compression on a universal testing machine. As compared
face coverage larger than 2 × 2 cm2 when assembled into a 2D to a simple 3D assembly of H-GO microbubbles (not yet ther-
structure (inset picture in Figure 4a). Once H-GO spherical mally reduced) showing linear deformation tendency, three
microbubbles are suspended on the air–water interface, they characteristic regimes of deformation were obtained in the
spontaneously form a 2D-assembled structure via buoyancy stress–strain curve of the 3D RDH structures (Figure 4g): i) a
and capillary attraction among the bubbles. The 2D assembly nearly linear elastic region that can be associated with bending
can be directly transferred without impinging the structural of the cell walls and stretching of the faces (0% < strain <10%),
order of a hexagonally close-packed (HCP) array over a long ii) a successive linear region with lower slope, corresponding
range (i.e., ≈1 cm), onto the target substrate to form integrated to elastic collapse (10% < strain < 60%), and iii) a gradual
hierarchical structures (Figure 4a). The transferred HCP array increasing regime of stress at strains > 60%, which is defined as
of the bubbles is then transformed into an interconnected 2D a densification stage. After transforming 3D FCC structures of
honeycomb lattice while preserving structural order via chem- spherical H-GO-shelled microbubbles into 3D RDH lattice struc-
ical reduction of H-GO bubbles (Figure 4b,c and Figure S10, tures, E increased from 20 to 400 kPa at an equivalent density
Supporting Information). (Table S2, Supporting Information). Theoretically, for an ideal
The formation of a 2D closed-cellular structure (CCS) 3D RDH lattice without structural defects and/or loss, the effec-
encourages the construction of a centimeter-scale 3D CCS tive Young’s modulus is expected to reach at 0.58–1.15 MPa (with
based on the 3D assembly of H-GO spherical microbubbles. a wall thickness variation in the range of 50–100 nm, Section S3,
Using a continuous packing procedure driven by the buoyancy- Supporting Information). The observed modulus is smaller than
assisted assembly of the H-GO spherical bubbles, we could the theoretical expectation, which can be attributed to mass loss
prepare a centimeter-scale close-packed 3D assembly of H-GO during the reduction and the inclusion of irregularities.
microbubbles (Figure S11, Supporting Information). Theo- In particular, it should be noted that structural transformation
retically, the 3D assembly of the spherical microbubbles would into self-interconnected CCS through thermal reduction derived
generate a face-centered cubic (FCC) structure. Subsequently, the structural superelasticity and full recovery characteristics as
via 3D Voronoi tessellation, the FCC structure will be trans- shown in the loading–unloading hysteresis of the 3D graphene
formed into one of the only five complete space-filling convex CCS (blue line in Figure 4g). Indeed, as shown in Figure 4h,
polytopes (i.e., plesiohedra), an RDH lattice, which will serve compression tests involving the 3D graphene CCS showed full
as the 3D CCS. The RDH lattice is clearly distinguished from recovery from strains exceeding 87% (Figure S17 and Movie S2,
the inverse FCC structure (i.e., 3D inverse opal structure) in Supporting Information). The compressive superelasticity was
that it is composed of regular convex polyhedral cellular units also demonstrated in the repeated stress–strain curves observed
with uniform wall thickness (Figure S12, Supporting Informa- in the cycle test of 3D graphene CCS (Figure S18, Supporting
tion) . Indeed, as shown in Figure 4e of X-ray microtomography Information). The structures showed reproducible structural
imaging, the 3D-assembled structure of H-GO after thermal integrity after 100 loading–unloading cycles (maximum com-
reduction is fully interconnected to form the 3D CCS with pressive strain ≈ 80%). We also observed that the initial mechan-
complete space-filling RDHs. As apparent in Figure 4f, inter- ical property (modulus) decreased but saturated shortly in the
connected polytopes with well-defined edges and vertices of course of the cycle test, which indicates that the structure has
are manifested. Notably, the morphology of the cellular structure reliable durability under repeated external mechanical stress. In
revealed from the cross-sectional scanning electron microscopy contrast to randomly structured graphene foams or aerogels,[9–12]
(SEM) images is substantially close to the polygonal geometry of we contribute the superelasticity of our 3D CCS to the efficient
the ideal 3D RDH lattice. It should be noted that this geometry stress dissipation process through the complete space-filling
is the first-ever experimental realization of closed-cellular solid closed-cellular network of 3D hierarchically ordered structures,
foam with regular 3D space-filling convex polyhedral cells. spanned from nanoscale H-GO platelets to macroscale 3D RDH
By virtue of the formation of the plesiohedral complete lattice structures. In particular, the 3D CCS of regular polyhedral
space-filling 3D CCS over the centimeter-scale, we can expect cells and nearly monolithic interconnected structures can effec-
such ultra-lightness at a theoretical density (ρ) as low as tively dissipate the compressive strain over the space to maintain
3.6–7.2 mg cm−3 given an average edge length of 50 µm and a wall the integrity of the entire structure, which is another advantage
thickness in a range of 50–100 nm (Section S3 and Figure S13, harnessed by complete space-filling network architectures.[29]
Supporting Information). The density can be tuned by manipu- Finally, we systematically compared ρ versus E data of the
lating the size and shell thickness of microbubbles. Intriguingly, fabricated 3D CCS with other advanced porous or cellular 3D
despite the substantial volumetric shrinkage upon reduction carbon-based structures in an Ashby plot focusing on ultralight
(Figure S14, Supporting Information), the internal structures materials (ρ < 10 mg cm−3) as shown in Figure 4i.[9,12–14,16–21,30–35]
remain intact, resulting in the formation of lightweight mate- First, the data follow a linear trend of E ~ ρ (Section S4, Sup-
rials consisting of a graphene-based CCS (Figure 4d). Fur- porting Information), which strongly suggests that the fab-
thermore, because of the restored nature of graphene after ricated cellular structure is the closed one.[36] In addition, as
reduction (Figures S15 and S16, Supporting Information) as apparent from the plot, it is obvious that the fabricated 3D CCS
well as structural benefit from hierarchically designed cellular outperforms conventional carbon-based lightweight materials

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Figure 4. Centimeter-scale 2D and 3D assembly of microbubbles. a) OM image of 2D hexagonal close-packed (HCP) array of spherical microbub-
bles (image in the inset shows the ≈2 cm diameter of the assembly). b,c) OM images of (b) the 2D HCP and (c) 2D honeycomb lattice composed of
H-GO-shelled microbubbles. The insets show 2D fast Fourier transform images. The 2D HCP and 2D honeycomb lattice structures exhibit identical
topologies, as revealed in the skeletal lattice images (second row of (b) and (c)) and lattice edge length distributions (third row of (b) and (c)). d) A
digital photograph of the centimeter-scale 3D CCS of GO microbubbles placed on a green foxtail (after reduction). e) 3D reconstructed X-ray micro­
tomography images of the 3D assembly of thermally reduced H-GO-shelled microbubbles. f) SEM image of the 3D RDH structure. The inset shows a
cross-sectional image of an ideal RDH structure, which agrees well with the experimentally obtained SEM images (locally highlighted in yellow lines).
g) Stress–strain curves of the 3D RDH structure (ρ = 4.66 mg cm–3) and 3D assembly of H-GO-shelled microbubbles (ρ = 11.7 mg cm–3). h) Consecu-
tive digital photographs showing the compressibility of the 3D RDH structure. i) An Ashby plot for the 3D RDH structures compared to carbon-based
3D porous structures (open- and closed-cellular) and 3D-printed structures.

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