Carbon-based pastes and inks are used extensively in a wide range of printed electronics because of their widespread availability, electrical conductivity and low cost. Overcoming the inherent tendency of the nano-carbon to agglomerate to form a stable dispersion is necessary if these inks are to be taken from the lab scale to industrial production. Plasma functionalization of graphite nanoplatelets (GNP) adds functional groups to their surface to improve their interaction with the polymer resin. This offers an attractive method to overcome these problems when creating next generation inks. Both dynamic and oscillatory rheology were used to evaluate the stability of inks made with different loadings of functionalized and unfunctionalized GNP in a thin resin, typical of a production ink. The rheology and the printability tests showed the same level of dispersion and electrical performance had been achieved with both functionalized and unfunctionalized GNPs. The unfunctionalized GNPs agglomerate to form larger, lower aspect particles, reducing interparticle interactions and particle–medium interactions. Over a 12-week period, the viscosity, shear thinning behavior and viscoelastic properties of the unfunctionalized GNP inks fell, with decreases in viscosity at 1.17 s⁻¹ of 24, 30, 39% for the ϕ = 0.071, 0.098, 0.127 GNP suspensions, respectively. However, the rheological properties of the functionalized GNP suspensions remained stable as the GNPs interacted better with the polymer in the resin to create a steric barrier which prevented the GNPs from approaching close enough for van der Waals forces to be effective.

碳基浆料和油墨因其广泛的可用性，导电性和低成本而广泛用于各种印刷电子产品。如果要将这些油墨从实验室规模转移到工业生产，则必须克服纳米碳团聚形成稳定分散体的固有趋势。石墨纳米片（GNP）的等离子体功能化在其表面添加了官能团，以改善它们与聚合物树脂的相互作用。这提供了一种有吸引力的方法来克服在创建下一代墨水时出现的这些问题。动态和振荡流变学都用于评估由稀薄树脂（通常是生产用油墨）中的不同官能化和未官能化GNP负载量制成的油墨的稳定性。流变学和可印刷性测试表明，无论是官能化的还是未官能化的GNP，其分散度和电性能均达到相同水平。未官能化的GNP团聚形成较大的，较低方面的颗粒，从而减少了颗粒间的相互作用以及颗粒与介质之间的相互作用。在12周的时间内，未官能化的GNP油墨的粘度，剪切稀化行为和粘弹性下降，在1.17 s时粘度下降G  = 0.071、0.098、0.127 GNP悬浮液的^-1分别为24％，30％，39％。但是，功能化GNP悬浮液的流变特性保持稳定，因为GNP与树脂中的聚合物相互作用更好，从而形成空间屏障，从而阻止了GNP接近足够的范德华力才能有效。