Mechanical Properties of Graphene Oxide/Polyvinyl Alcohol Composite Film

Graphene oxide (GO) was served as mechanical strengthening to prepare GO/Polyvinyl Alcohol(PVA) composite film. This was accomplished in order to explore the influence of contents of GO on the tensile strength and failure strain of GO/PVA composite film. The results showed that as the GO content increased, the tensile strength of the composite film became greater rapidly at first, and then decreased gradually. When the GO content was 20%, the film had its maximum tensile strength (59.6 MPa). This is over 500% of the tensile strength of pure PVA film. The failure strain of GO/PVA composite film decreased rapidly as the GO content increased. The enhancement mechanism of the composite can be explained by the existence of multi-hydrogen bonds between the hydroxyl (-OH) groups of PVA and oxygen-containing functional groups of GO.