Interfacial Engineering in PDMS/Graphene Composites via Anchoring Polypyrrole Nanowires to Enhance its Electro-Photo Thermal Performance

Abstract Interphase in polymer composites plays a key role in enhancing their multi-functionality. Herein, an effective strategy is designed to optimize the interphase microstructure in graphene foam/PDMS (PDMS/GrF) using polypyrrole (PPy) nanowires (denoted as PDMS/GrF@PPy). The interfacial microenvironment of graphene foam is successfully modified by anchoring polypyrrole nanowires, showing strong interfacial strength with PDMS. The tensile strength, Young’s modulus, electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, mechanical durability and electron-photo-thermal deicing efficiency of PDMS/GrF@PPy composites are simultaneously higher than that of PDMS/GrF composites. Molecular simulations further illustrated that the interfacial interaction energy increased from 100.4 to 280.2 Kcal/mol after introducing PPy nanowires between GrF and PDMS. As a proof of concept for deicing application, PDMS/GrF@PPy composites displays excellent deicing efficiencies of 82.9% and 55.7% by Joule heat and NIR irradiation after 500th stretching cycles, respectively, which is obviously outperforming PPy@GrF composites (58.3% and 44.2%). Consequently, PPy nanowires not only optimizes the interfacial strength of polymer composites, but also endows them with multi-functionalities, providing promising candidates of deicing, strain sensor, thermal interface management, etc.