Preparation and Characterization of Graphene/RTV Silicone Rubber Composites

In this article we report the preparation of a graphene/room temperature vulcanized (RTV) silicone rubber composite. Both the morphology and the properties of the composite were investigated in detail. SEM study shows that the composite has a microphase-separated structure. PDMS is the continuous phase, and the randomly distributed graphene nanosheets and a few aggregates are the dispersed phase. However, DSC curves of the composites have only one glass transition temperature (T-g). With the increases of the graphene content, T-g increases and T-m. decreases. Mechanical properties tests show that the addition of graphene has a significant reinforcement effect on silicone rubber. The tensile strength is 0.37MPa with graphene mass fraction at 1.0%, which increases 76% compared with that of pure silicone rubber parallel sample.