Graphene Flagship: Production of Aerographite

A novel cellular material called Aerographite  (density < 200 µg cm^-3), will be also used as starting component for  nanocomposites  for  energy  storage  and  catalysis  applications. Aerographite  is  an ultra-light  weight,  electrically  conductive, mechanically  robust,  and  flexible  graphite  based material.  It  is more  than  4  times  lighter  than  Ni  microlattices,  which  were up  to  now  the  most lightweight materials.  In contrast to already established synthesis for other carbon nanostructures like CNTs or graphene, the CVD process used for aerographite employs ZnO as template for the synthesis of bulk samples on  the  cm³  scale.  It  has  been  proved  that  this  inorganic semiconductor  is  a  suitable substrate/template  material  for  sp²  hybridized  carbons,  e.g., CNTs  and  graphene.  The  common structural  motive  of  the  Aerographite  family  is  the  completely interconnected  network  of microstructures with a nanoscopic wall thickness. Variants come as filled and unfilled, corrugated walls,  or  as  a  super  lightweight  example  of  a  hollow  framework of  supports  from  amorphous carbon. The atomic structure can be tuned from graphitic to glass-like pyrolytic carbon, with the advantage of remarkable mechanical properties. This most lightweight material reaches the highest merit indices for specific moduli observed until now.