Investigation of Effect of Addition of 2D Graphene Oxide and Boron Nitride on Mechanical and Microstructure Properties of Fly Ash Derived Geopolymer Foam

The present work focusses on the investigation of impact of addition of 2D structure graphene oxide (GO), boron nitride (BN) and combination of both on the mechanical and structural propoerties of class F fly ash derived geopolymer foam. Using Al powder as foaming agent various composition of the geopolymer foam were prepared containing above mentioned 2D structures. Geopolymer foam were prepared by addition (in separate experiments) of 0.69 wt% of GO, 0.69 wt% of BN and 1.2 wt% of 2D material with equal wt% contribution of GO and BN. The weight percentage of foaming agent that is Al powder was kept constant which was 0.7 wt% for all the experiments. The chemical and structural properties of the obtained foam were determined using XRD, FTIR, SEM and XPS techniques.The resulting optimised geopolymer foam with 2D structure was easy to prepare and demonstrate enhanced mechanical properties even in presence of small amount of these 2D fillers. The mechanical strength of the geopoymer foam increase by195.20%when both the fillers were added in equal amount. The improved properties may be due to the enhanced geopolymerization process driven by functional groups of GO along with the enahnced filler prperties of 2D hexagonal BN sheets. Such nanoengineered geopolymer foam derived from abundant waste material that is fly ash can be a promising material for development of multifunctional structured materials.