The Soft Face of Graphene

Graphene is a one-atom thick carbon layer. Since being discovered in 2004, this new form of carbon has demonstrated a great deal of attractive physical properties. It is thin, transparent, strong, conductive and impermeable to small molecules. All these extraordinary properties have triggered explosive growth of research work in last decade for delivering this 2D molecular building block as engineering materials. From the perspective of soft matter, graphene can be viewed as a 2D colloid or a polymer having two-dimensional molecular configuration. Understanding the “soft” features of graphene is crucial as successful engineering of nano-scale objects into bulk materials has previously been demonstrated in complex-fluid environments. This talk will discuss the molecular structure of graphene-based colloids, and also their molecular interaction with complex fluids. Based on this, I will talk about how this understanding can lead to soft techniques for large-scale production of graphene and assembling graphene-based soft materials for a range of applications such as energy, biosensors, hydrogels and functional membranes.