Graphene-Based Adaptive Thermal Camouflage.

In nature, adaptive coloration has been effectively utilized for concealment and signaling. Various biological mechanisms have evolved to tune the reflectivity for visible and ultraviolet light. These examples inspire many artificial systems for mimicking adaptive coloration to match the visual appearance to their surroundings. Thermal camouflage, however, has been an outstanding challenge which requires an ability to control the emitted thermal radiation from the surface. Here we report a new class of active thermal surfaces capable of efficient real-time electrical-control of thermal emission over the full infrared (IR) spectrum without changing the temperature of the surface. Our approach relies on electro-modulation of IR absorptivity and emissivity of multilayer graphene via reversible intercalation of nonvolatile ionic liquids. The demonstrated devices are light (30 g/m2), thin (<50 µm), and ultraflexible, which can conformably coat their environment. In addition, by combining active thermal surfaces with a feedback mechanism, we demonstrate realization of an adaptive thermal camouflage system which can reconfigure its thermal appearance and blend itself with the varying thermal background in a few seconds. Furthermore, we show that these devices can disguise hot objects as cold and cold ones as hot in a thermal imaging system. We anticipate that, the electrical control of thermal radiation would impact on a variety of new technologies ranging from adaptive IR optics to heat management for outer space applications.

Synthesis of Large Area Graphene for High Performance in Flexible Optoelectronic Devices.

This work demonstrates an attractive low-cost route to obtain large area and high-quality graphene films by using the ultra-smooth copper foils which are typically used as the negative electrodes in lithium-ion batteries. We first compared the electronic transport properties of our new graphene film with the one synthesized by using commonly used standard copper foils in chemical vapor deposition (CVD). We observed a stark improvement in the electrical performance of the transistors realized on our graphene films. To study the optical properties on large area, we transferred CVD based graphene to transparent flexible substrates using hot lamination method and performed large area optical scanning. We demonstrate the promise of our high quality graphene films for large areas with ~400 cm(2) flexible optical modulators. We obtained a profound light modulation over a broad spectrum by using the fabricated large area transparent graphene supercapacitors and we compared the performance of our devices with the one based on graphene from standard copper. We propose that the copper foils used in the lithium-ion batteries could be used to obtain high-quality graphene at much lower-cost, with the improved performance of electrical transport and optical properties in the devices made from them.