Issue 12/2015 - HIT has developed the world's lightest magnetic elastomer material

Recently, the research group of Professor Li Hui of the School of Civil Engineering of Harbin Institute of Technology successfully developed a new intelligent graphene aerogel material, which is the lightest magnetic elastomer material in the world and can be widely used in many fields
.

Professor Li Hui's research group adopts the improved hydrothermal method to deposition superparamagnetic nano-ferric oxide particles in situ during the self-assembly process of large pieces of graphene oxide, and takes the lead in studying and realizing the intelligent characteristics of graphene aerogels such as recoverable large deformation and piezoresistive effect induced by external directional magnetic field, and the developed intelligent graphene aerogel materials provide new ideas
for the research of magnetic elastomer materials.
The material can be widely used in self-sensing flexible drivers, micro-nano switches, valves, remote control absorption and energy storage and dissipation of
oil and heavy metal ions.

It is understood that the use of graphene's excellent properties to construct graphene-based macrostructure has become a research hotspot
in the field of materials.
Among the many graphene assembly structures, graphene aerogel is one of
the most striking.
Its rich pore structure, large specific surface area, excellent compression performance and good conductivity make graphene aerogels have broad application prospects
in the fields of electrode materials, catalyst carriers, supercapacitors, sensors and pollutant adsorption.

At present, the research of graphene aerogel by scholars at home and abroad mainly focuses on mechanical compression, conductivity, electrochemical catalysis and adsorption performance, and there are few
studies on its intelligent characteristics such as controllability, driving and dynamic response under external load excitation such as electric field and magnetic field.
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