{"id":9885,"date":"2015-04-29T05:54:34","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T12:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/?p=9885"},"modified":"2015-04-29T06:07:47","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T13:07:47","slug":"put-three-things-together-3d-aerogel-graphene-got-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/put-three-things-together-3d-aerogel-graphene-got-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Put Three Things Together \u2013 3D, Aerogel, Graphene \u2013 and It\u2019s Got to be Good"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there were a pantheon of technological hipness, right now three front-runners for induction would be 3D printing, aerogel and graphene.\u00a0 They all rank high on the disruptive technology scale, have enormous amounts of good press, and excite the imagination with their potential.<\/p>\n

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have gone beyond combining chocolate and peanut butter by blending the three higher-tech ingredients into a rather amazing battery material with excellent electrical and mechanical properties.\u00a0 We have discussed the idea of structural batteries in this blog, and this new melding of technologies holds much promise.<\/p>\n

Aerogel, as defined in the Laboratory\u2019s announcement, \u201cis a synthetic porous, ultralight material derived from a gel, in which the liquid component of the gel has been replaced with a gas. It is often referred to as \u2018liquid smoke.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Aerogel<\/a>

Aerogel rightly earns its name of “liquid smoke”<\/p><\/div>\n

Lawrence Livermore researchers<\/a> have used a 3D printing technique known as direct ink writing to craft an engineered architecture microlattice with well-defined pores \u2013 which are essential to the performance of the lattice.<\/p>\n

\"Microlattice<\/a>

Microlattice formed by a graphene oxide ink forced through a micronozzle to form 3D printed lattice structure. \u00a0Illustration: Ryan Chen\/LLNL<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Combining a 3D printed microlattice with aerogel makes a lightweight structure with high surface area, excellent electrical conductivity, mechanical stiffness and supercompressibility (the ability to withstand up to 90-percent compressive strain).<\/p>\n

The announcement explains, \u201cPrevious attempts at creating bulk graphene aerogels produce a largely random pore structure, excluding the ability to tailor transport and other mechanical properties of the material for specific applications such as separations, flow batteries and pressure sensors.\u201d\u00a0 The pores turn out to be important, since the random structure inhibits mass transport.<\/p>\n