Poly(vinyl alcohol) Fibers with Excellent Mechanical Properties Produced by Reinforcement of Single-walled Graphene Oxide Nanoribbons with Complete Morphology Obtained by Freeze-drying

Nanofiller reinforcement is an effective approach to realize high performance of regular synthetic fibers. In this paper, graphene oxide nanoribbons (GONRs) with complete morphology were prepared via unzipping single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) through long-time freeze-drying after oxidation. GONRs derived from SWCNTs (SGONRs) did not need any modification and could be directly added to poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) to form uniform dispersions and then continuous fibers were fabricated using wet spinning and hot-drawing. SGONRs provided abundant hydrogen bonding interaction with PVA chains, so SGONRs could not only obviously improve the dispersibility in PVA, but also enhance the mechanical properties of the composites. The tensile strength of PVA/SGONRs composite fibers with 0.4 wt% loading of SGONRs reach 1032 MPa, improved by 121 % compared with PVA/SWCNTs fiber, and by 200% with PVA fiber, respectively.