(286f) Fe3O4/graphene nanocomposites with Upsurge Superhydrophobic Properties

In earlier decade, graphene has revealed a copiousness of both fundamental science and potential applications due to its exceptional electrical, mechanical, thermal, and optical properties. Recently, increasing effort has been devoted to exploiting its new features, for example, wetting properties. Benefitting from its characteristic properties, graphene shows great potential for the fabrication of superhydrophobic surfaces, which could be potentially used for various anti-water applications like antifogging, self-cleaning, and anti-icing. In the present work, Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles fabricated graphene were cast-off for their wettability study. The composites show better superhydrophobic property than pure graphene and Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles. Inclusion of Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles to the graphene shows increase in water contact angle (WCA) from 105 ± 1° to 159 ± 1°. Raman studies suggest this increase in water contact angle is due to increase in structural interaction between Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles and graphene. The composites were analyzed by different sophisticated analytical techniques. We further propose to examine Fe₃O₄/graphene composite antifogging ability in near future.