Highly Conductive Nanocomposite Enabled by an Accordion-like Graphene Network for Flexible Heating Films and Supercapacitors

Graphene-reinforced polymer nanocomposites can have favorable electrical properties, making them promising in electromagnetic, electrochromic, and photovoltaic devices. Using graphene to fabricate nanocomposites with specific electrical properties requires that the dispersion of graphene in polymer matrix is well-controlled, which however remains a big challenge. Here, we propose two intriguing designs, that is, slightly oxidizing graphene sheets and hot drawing nanocomposites, resulting in a uniform, dense, and highly aligned graphene network. The achieved conductivity of nanocomposites is as high as 25 S m–1 at 6.25 wt % of graphene, which is 8 and 2 orders of magnitude higher than those of polymer matrix and nanocomposites without hot drawing, respectively. Furthermore, prototypes of heating films and flexible supercapacitors made of the highly conductive nanocomposites both exhibit high performance.