Graphene and MoS2 Gel for Aligned 3D Printing for Electronic and Mechanical Analysis

Designing 3D printed micro-architectures using electronic materials with well-designed electronic structures will potentially lead to accessible device fabrication for ‘on-demand’ applications. Here we show gelation of six different concentration of graphene/MoS2 (100:0, 10:90,30:70, 50:50, 70:30, 90:10) and Graphene/BN (50:50) alloys. Rheology studies show the viscoelastic properties of the gels, in addition to providing shield yield stress. The shear-thinning behavior provides the ability of fabrication of 3D printed devices in an aligned controlled nozzle-extrusion based modified 3D printer, enabling the fabrication of electrodes for analyzing electron-tunneling barrier width between conductive graphene-centers and studying the resultant mechanical properties. The 3D printed devices were solidified by removing water through lyophilization. The ordered graphitic region with sp² hybridized carbon atoms in the graphene sheets is in the order of 8.28 ±0.23 nm. The temperature-dependent electronic transport 3D printed electrodes structures exhibited a transport-barrier of 16 meV and a tunneling width of 0.56 nm (Fowler Nordheim electron tunneling) with graphene centers having a carrier concentration of 2.63457*10¹²/cm². By modifying the graphene/MoS2 concentration, we were able to control the Young’s Modulus of the structure between 0.6 and 1.6 MPa. We envision that the proposed 3D-printing of gels of nanomaterial will lead to an evolution in the design of next-generation of ‘on-demand’ printed electronic and electromechanical devices.