Facile fabrication of three-dimensional graphene/carbon nanotube sandwich structures

A facile method was designed and developed to fabricate 3D carbon material, from inducing the growth of 1D carbon nanotubes (CNT) on to the reduced 2D graphene oxide sheets (rGO). In this method, nickel nanoparticles were firstly loaded onto graphene oxide sheets that were modified by surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). Then CNTs were induced to grow on nickel-loaded graphene oxide sheets via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. The as-made material was characterized by using field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and N2 adsorption technologies. It was proved that the 3D graphene/carbon nanotube sandwich structures (3D-GCS), with parallel rGO layers and pillar-like CNTs have been successfully produced.