ABSTRACT
Graphene, a two-dimensional material with a large specic surface area, has outstanding thermal, mechanical, and electrical properties. This chapter discusses the key material properties that determine the resistance of graphene to its structural instability, and the effectiveness of controlled graphene wrinkles in the formation of composites with polymers, in order to make advanced multifunctional materials. This chapter further points out that the exceptional mechanical properties of graphene could be utilized by forming chemical bonds at the graphene-polymer interface on functionalized graphene sheets. A focus of the chapter is to understand the mechanism associated with the formation of such composites while maintaining the intact structure of graphene, and to demonstrate how the chemical reaction helps to deal with the challenging problem of restacking graphene sheets. Following this, the chapter discusses challenges to the formation of composites, ways of assessing reinforcement, and the applications of the resultant composites.
