A research team led by Professor Jung-Hee Lee of the Department of BIN Convergence Engineering has announced a breakthrough in the development of polymer composite materials that could make dreamlike applications a reality, such as electronic paper with paper-thin flexible displays and wearable computers as easy to put on as clothing. Their announcement has attracted attention from the academic community.

The team reported that, together with Dr. Bon-cheol Koo's research group at the Jeonbuk Branch of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, it has published its findings on the development of a 'graphene-based highly conductive composite material' in the April issue of Nano Letters (impact factor 12.1), a leading international journal in nanotechnology.

Graphene is a thin, transparent carbon nanomaterial produced by peeling single layers from the surface of natural graphite. It is more than 100 times stronger than steel, and its thermal and electrical conductivities exceed those of diamond and copper by factors of about two and one thousand, respectively. For these reasons, it is called a "dream material" and has attracted interest across various industrial fields.

However, producing polymer composites requires large quantities of graphene, and when mixed with plastics (polymeric materials), graphene tends to agglomerate in resins and organic solvents. Despite its excellent properties, this has limited its industrial applications.

Therefore, manufacturing highly conductive polymer composites required a method to simultaneously improve dispersion and electrical conductivity, and the research team has discovered a groundbreaking method to address this issue.

The fabrication process discovered by the team can simultaneously increase the electrical conductivity and mechanical strength of high-performance engineering plastics. This suggests broad applicability, including coating layers for display materials and use in the aerospace composite industry, which has drawn significant interest.

This new technology has already been registered under a domestic patent, and an international patent application has also been filed.