Synthesis of a pyrene-functionalized hyperbranched polyethylene ternary copolymer for efficient graphite exfoliation in chloroform and formation of ethylene-vinyl acetate/graphene nanocomposites

A strategy for preparing ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA)/graphene nanocomposites from liquid-phase exfoliated graphene has been explored with the use of a pyrene-functionalized hyperbranched polyethylene (HBPE) ternary copolymer, HBPE@Py@PMA, as stabilizer for graphite exfoliation. The HBPE@Py@PMA was synthesized by combining the Pd-diimine-catalyzed chain walking ternary ethylene copolymerization and atomic transfer radical polymerization techniques and has been confirmed to possess a HBPE core simultaneously bearing pyrene terminal groups and polymethacrylate side chains. As stabilizer, it is found to effectively promote graphite exfoliation in CHCl 3 to render high-quality few-layer graphene with an efficiency as high as 43%. Meanwhile, it can be steadily adsorbed on the exfoliated graphene surface to concurrently render functionalized graphene well dispersible in EVA matrix with strong interfacial interactions. This allows us to obtain EVA/graphene nanocomposites from resulting graphene dispersion through simple solution mixing process. By adding only 0.5 wt% of graphene, the dielectric constant of resulting composite increases by 55% compared to pure EVA, with a dielectric loss only 0.012. The role mechanism of the HBPE@Py@PMA for promoting graphite exfoliation in CHCl 3 and the formation of EVA/graphene nanocomposites from the resulting graphene has been proposed.