FUTURE Seminar by Burcu Saner Okan

“The Extraordinary Guest of New Form of Carbon: Graphene”

Burcu Saner Okan

 (Sabanci University Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Research and Application Center & Composite Technologies Center of Excellence)

Graphene has growing potential in plenty of potential applications such as energy, wind turbines, construction, defense, automotive, aeronautics and aerospace applications due to its extraordinary electronic, thermal, and mechanical properties, resulting from its two-dimensional structure. In the recent years, there are numerous studies about graphene synthesis and its applications in laboratory scale but mass production of graphene has still doubts and obstacles due to harsh reaction conditions, high cost, high volume production and sustainability issues. On the other hand, recycling and upcycling processes open a new insight in graphene manufacturing and can be a new way to fasten its commercialization by lowering production costs and providing environmentally friendly solutions. Furthermore, while graphene is in the long-term expected to offer a wide number of solutions for industrial sectors, numerous challenges still have to be overcome even in developing a fundamental understanding of graphene-based materials and their polymeric composites. Aggregation or restacking of graphene sheets is the main obstacle in polymer matrix and this leads to catastrophic failures in composite structures. There are also several attempts about the utilization of graphene as a primary and multiscale reinforcement in neat and carbon/glass fiber reinforced composites in structural applications. To conclude, this outstanding and multi-functional carbon material creates a remarkable impact in academia and industrial applications, and the number of graphene based products in commodity and nish applications will increases in the near future by applying this disruptive technology.