Dopamine-assisted wet spinning and mechanical reinforcement of graphene oxide fibers

Abstract

Bioinspired polydopamine coatings have been widely used for the surface modification of various materials because of their strong adhesion, facile application method, and functionalization ability. However, dopamine has not been previously utilized as a coagulation agent for graphene oxide fibers (GOFs). In this study, we performed the wet spinning of GOFs using dopamine as a coagulation agent (denoted as DA-GOFs) and successive polymerization of dopamine inside the fibers. The polymerized DA-GOFs (pDA-GOFs) exhibited enhanced mechanical properties with a 97% higher tensile strength than that of the fibers coagulated with CaCl2. The described dopamine-assisted wet spinning and polymerization process were simple but effective method for preparing mechanically strong fibers, which can be potentially employed in flexible and wearable electronic applications.