Industrial Carbon Nanomaterials as Multifunctional Platforms for Electrical Engineering

The technological transfer of carbon-based nanomaterials from academic research to industrial manufacturing remains a central challenge in modern electrical engineering. While pristine single-layer graphene offers exceptional theoretical performance, its widespread adoption is severely constrained by high production costs, synthesis complexity, and scalability limits. This thesis investigates scalable carbon-based materials, specifically Graphene Nanoplatelets (GNPs), nanographitic nanomembranes, and carbon-based Screen-Printed Electrodes (SPEs), as practical, industrially viable alternatives for innovative electrical applications. Although GNPs display lower purity and structural imperfections compared to ideal monolayer graphene, they provide a highly favorable balance of electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties, enabling cost-effective integration into multifunctional engineering systems. Through a multi-scale experimental framework, this work provides a comprehensive electro-thermal and structural characterization of these carbon material systems. Their practical validity is demonstrated across a diverse range of sensing and actuation nanotechnologies. The developed applications span electro-thermal actuators and thermal heaters to distributed temperature sensing platforms and smart electrochemical monitoring systems utilizing SPEs and nanomembranes for environmental pollutant detection. By linking fundamental material characterization to functional prototype validation, this thesis proves that industrial-grade carbon nanomaterials, nanomembranes, and printable carbon inks serve as an effective, practical bridge to transition graphene out of research laboratories and into real-world industrial technologies.