American Chemical Society, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 20(7), p. 10702-10709, 2015
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Graphene presents an ideal candidate for lightweight, high strength composite materials given its superior mechanical properties (specific strength of 130GPa and stiffness of 1 TPa). To date, easily scalable graphene-like materials in a form of separated flakes (exfoliated graphene, graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide) have been investigated as candidates for large-scale applications such as material reinforcement. These graphene-like materials do not fully exhibit all the capabilities of graphene in composite materials. In the current study, we show that macro (2''x 2'') graphene laminates and fibers can be produced using large continuous sheets of single layer graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The resulting composite structures have potential to outperform the current state of the art composite materials in both mechanical properties and electrical conductivities (>8 S/cm with only 0.13% volumetric graphene loading and 5·10(3) S/cm for pure graphene fibers) with estimated graphene contribution >10 GPa in strength and 1TPa in stiffness.