Optical, Electrical, and Electromechanical Properties of Hybrid Graphene/Carbon Nanotube Films

Here, we report the dependence of the optical, electrical, and electromechanical properties of graphene/nanotube hybrid fi lms on the type of assembly configuration. A single-layer CVD-grown graphene and a self-supporting, aligned, multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWNT) sheet (hereafter "MWNT sheet") were combined to produce hybrid fi lms. A MWNT sheet was transferred onto CVD graphene on Cu foil to yield a MWNT sheet/graphene hybrid fi lm as described further below. Transfer in two different arrangements (the second by simply flipping this hybrid fi lm) yielded MWNT/graphene (MWNT/G) and graphene/MWNT (G/MWNT) hybrid fi lms, respectively. It was observed that, despite having essentially exactly the same composition, these hybrid fi lms exhibit different optical, electrical, and electromechanical properties. The obtained results demonstrate that high performance of these hybrid films, as compared to the separate constituents (graphene alone or MWCNT sheet alone), can be achieved by certain choices of the arrangement and combination of graphene layers and MWNT sheets.