Nanotech materials useful for a wide variety of applications may
result from the discovery that adding very small amounts of
graphene to polymers greatly increases the desirable properties
of the polymers, and does so more cheaply than similar
nanocomposites using functionalized single-wall nanotubes. From
Northwestern University, via AAAS EurekAlert “By adding
graphene, researchers create superior polymer“: Researchers at
Northwestern University and Princeton University have created a
new kind of polymer that, because of its extraordinary thermal
and mechanical properties, could be used in everything from
airplanes to solar cells. The polymer, a nanocomposite that
incorporates functionalized, exfoliated graphene sheets, even
conducts electricity, and researchers hope to use that property
to eventually create thermally stable, optically transparent
conducting polymers. …Researchers at the McCormick School of
Engineering originally teamed up with researchers at Princeton
several years ago. McCormick researcher