Self-assembled macroscopic structures of graphene oxide fibers through a wet-fusing strategy

Graphene assemblies exhibit prominent properties because of the high-performing graphene sheets serving as structural units as well as the ingenious design of assembled structures. However, the diversity of structural features is limited by the lack of creativity while keeping using graphene sheets as building blocks. Meanwhile, homogeneous architectures acquired from ordinary assembling strategies appear to be insufficient for several advanced applications. Here, using as-prepared 1D graphene oxide fibers as the basic structural elements, we achieve arbitrary graphene assemblies ranging from 2D papers to 3D aerogels through a wet-fusion method. The wet-fusing assembly is spontaneous and easily controllable which also provides strong interconnection between the unit fibers. Unlike the conventional homogeneous graphene assemblies, these fiber-assembled materials have hierarchical structures with programmable fibrous textures, thus are more flexible in characteristic design. Our methodology brings forward a way to expand the family of graphene assemblies and is also an efficient strategy to pursue functional graphene structures. • 2D and 3D graphene assemblies with fibrous sub-structures were developed by wet-fusion of graphene oxide fibers. • The alignment of graphene sheets can be preserved to form fibrous textures in the fiber-fused structures. • Characters of these assemblies can be manipulated by controlled fusion of the elementary graphene oxide fibers. • The fiber-assembled materials have shown advantages in specific applications comparing with common graphene assemblies.