Morphologies and compression performance of graphene oxide/SiO2 modified phenolic foam

In this study, the graphene oxide/SiO2 hybrid materials with different sizes (GO/SiO2-80, GO/SiO2-170, GO/SiO2-250) were prepared via in situ preparation. Different sizes and weight fraction of GO/SiO2 were added into phenolic resin to prepare phenolic foam composites. The cell properties, morphologies, and mechanism of GO/SiO2 reinforced PF composites were studied. The results showed that the GO/SiO2-80 can improve the cell structure and compressive property obviously than other size nanoparticles. The PF modified with 1 wt% GO/SiO2-80 exhibited most uniform cell structure, and it showed a mean cell size of 117 mu m and narrow cell size distribution from 50 mu m to 225 mu m. The obtained PF/(1 wt% GO/SiO2-80) also showed an excellent compressive strength and modulus of 0.18 and 3.22 MPa, which has increased by 80% and 61%, respectively, compared to the pure PF. This method may make it possible for using GO/SiO2 hybrid materials to enhance the cell structure and compression performance of the phenolic foam composites with broader applications.