Solvothermal Reduction of Chemically Exfoliated Graphene Sheets

TL;DR

This paper introduces a solvothermal reduction method that significantly improves the quality and conductivity of chemically exfoliated graphene sheets, approaching the properties of pristine graphene.

Contribution

The study presents a novel solvothermal reduction technique that outperforms previous methods in reducing defects and oxygen content in chemically exfoliated graphene.

Findings

Reduced graphene sheets have conductivity close to pristine graphene.

The method lowers oxygen and defect levels more effectively than earlier techniques.

Graphene domains are significantly increased after reduction.

Abstract

Graphene has attracted much attention due to its interesting properties and potential applications. Chemical exfoliation methods have been developed to make graphene recently, aimed at large-scale assembly and applications such as composites and Li ion batteries. Although efficient, the chemical exfoliation methods involve oxidation of graphene and introduce defects in the as-made sheets. Hydrazine reduction at 100 has shown to partially restore the structure and conductance of graphite oxide. However, the reduced GO still shows strong defect peaks in Raman spectra with higher resistivity than pristine graphene by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. It is important to produce much less defective graphene sheets than GO, and develop more effective graphene reduction. Recently, we reported a mild exfoliation-reintercalation-expansion method to form high-quality GS with higher conductivity and lower oxidation degree than GO.5 Here, we present a 180 solvothermal reduction method for our GS and GO. The solvothermal reduction is more effective than the earlier reduction methods in lowering the oxygen and defect levels in GS, increasing the graphene domains, and bringing the conductivity of GS close to pristine graphene. The reduced GS possess the highest degree of pristinity among chemically derived graphene.