Polymer Science and Engineering

Biography

Biography: Kiran Shahzadi

Abstract

There is great demand of high strength biomaterials in various kind of industries. In current studies we developed a strategy for fabricating high strength biofilm from sodium carboxy methyl cellulose and graphene oxide (GO) using simple and facile method. Well known hummer method was used to synthesize GO from graphite powder and a simple two step procedure was adopted to get biofilm having the required superb qualities. This film showed splendid mechanical properties having additional fire retardant behavior comparing with pure sodium carboxy methyl cellulose film. Film surface morphology was studied by scanning electron microscope (SEM) with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) mode. Tensile test of film samples were performed using Universal Testing Machine equipped with 500N load cell at room temperature and an average humidity 20%. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were used to confirm crosslinking mechanism. The nanostructure of prepared biofilm clearly indicated layers under SEM. The stress–strain curve indicated five folds increase in the tensile strength with 0.7% GO and 0.09% borate in biofilm when compared with pure sodium carboxy methyl cellulose film. This modified biofilm showed fire-retardant behavior when exposed to flame, thus confirmed that compactly arranged graphene layers not only improve the mechanical properties but also improve fire resistivity of the biofilm. The simple and novel method used for the preparation of film provides a potential approach that may be utilized in the field of aerospace, tissue engineering and synthesizing flexible supercapacitor electrodes to be used in in different electronic devices.