Electrically conductive graphene-filled polymer composites with well organized three-dimensional microstructure

• Electrically conductive graphene-filled polystyrene composite is prepared by a novel approach integrating electrostatic self-assembly and latex compounding technology.
• Well-organized three dimensional graphene nanosheets (GNs) assemblies are successfully achieved in high viscosity polymer matrix.
• Compared with the previous reports, the obtained composites show excellent electrical properties, i.e. extremely low percolation of 0.09 vol% threshold and high saturated conductivity of 25.2 S/m.
• The variance of conductivity and microstructure of the composite films were studied.

Electrically conductive graphene-filled polystyrene nanocomposites with well-organized three dimensional (3D) microstructures were simply prepared by electrostatic assembly integrated latex technology. First, positively charged polystyrene was synthesized via disperse polymerization in ethanol/water medium by using a cationic co-monomer, and then directly co-assembled with graphene oxide. Eventually, a honeycomb-like graphene 3D framework was embedded in polystyrene matrix after in situ chemical reduction and hot compression molding. Due to the 3D conductive pathway derived from graphene based network evidenced by morphology studies, the fabricated nanocomposites show excellent electrical properties, i.e. extremely low percolation threshold of 0.09 vol% and high saturated conductivity of 25.2 S/m at GNs content of 1.22 vol%.