Interfacial engineering in PDMS/graphene composites via anchoring polypyrrole nanowires to enhance its electro-photo thermal performance

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.