Graphene composites with dental and biomedical applicability

Pure graphene in the form of few-layer graphene (FLG) – 1 to 6 layers – is biocompatible and non-cytotoxic. This makes FLG an ideal material to incorporate into dental polymers to increase their strength and durability. It is well known that graphene has high mechanical strength and has been shown to enhance the mechanical, physical and chemical properties of biomaterials. However, for commercial applicability, methods to produce larger than lab-scale quantities of graphene are required. Here, we present a simple method to make large quantities of FLG starting with commercially available multi-layer graphene (MLG). This FLG material was then used to fabricate graphene dental-polymer composites. The resultant graphene-modified composites show that low concentrations of graphene (ca. 0.2 wt %) lead to enhanced performance improvement in physio-mechanical properties – the mean compressive strength increased by 27% and the mean compressive modulus increased by 22%. Herein we report a new, cheap and simple method to make large quantities of few-layer graphene which was then incorporated into a common dental polymer to fabricate graphene-composites which shows very promising mechanical properties.