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Surface Energy Engineering in the Solvothermal Deoxidation of Graphene Oxide
Author(s) -
Lin Liangxu,
Zheng Xuelin,
Zhang Shaowei,
Allwood Dan A.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
advanced materials interfaces
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.671
H-Index - 65
ISSN - 2196-7350
DOI - 10.1002/admi.201300078
Subject(s) - graphene , materials science , oxide , dispersity , economies of agglomeration , solvent , nanotechnology , chemical engineering , reducing agent , surface energy , hydrazine (antidepressant) , solvothermal synthesis , metallurgy , composite material , organic chemistry , polymer chemistry , chemistry , chromatography , engineering
A route to achieving high yields of monodisperse, deeply deoxidized graphene oxide (GO) in solution is presented. It overcomes many of the problems of dispersibility and inefficient reduction of GO in solvothermal deoxidation that are usually observed, despite the previous use of strong reducing agents ( e.g. Fe 2+ , S or hydrazine). It is shown that the incomplete deoxidation is most likely due to agglomeration/self‐assembly of partially reduced GO, which also creates poor dispersibility. GO deoxidation is found to be highly sensitive to the solvent surface energy and, through experiments and empirical calculations, tuning the solvent surface energy to around 85.6 mJ/m 2 (at 100 °C) leads to fully deoxidized GO. These calculations also allow appropriate solvent surface energies to be calculated for other temperatures for deep deoxidation of GO. This approach makes solvothermal deoxidation of GO a potential route to large scale, economic production of highly disperse monolayered graphene.