A surprising example was a car bumper injection-molded from a thermoplastic polymer/graphene nanocomposite, which Antonio Peláez Amador said exhibited improved mechanical properties such as hardness, scratching resistance, tensile strength, while being lighter. Depending on the added graphene weight percentages and how they are processed, resins can become thermally and electrically conductive while benefiting from enhanced mechanical properties. Dispersed into rubber, graphene not only improves the material’s structural stability and impact resistance, it brings it triboelectric properties too, which could be of interest to tyre manufacturers.
Graphene even gets mixed into cement, turning the building material into what the HeidelbergCement group calls a cementitious conductive layer, used both as cement for bedding tiles and as a cheap heating resistor layer that provides floor heating at the same time. A demonstrator showed electricity conduction through the graphene-laden cement, heating up a tile above. A poster anticipated house-wide applications such as wall heating, outdoor de-icing, but also electromagnetic interference shielding, all structurally integrated.
