Thermally and Electrically Conductive Nanopapers from Reduced Graphene Oxide: effect of nanoflakes thermal annealing on the film structure and properties

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for creating graphene nanopapers from fully reduced graphene oxide suspensions, demonstrating improved thermal and electrical properties influenced by nanoflake morphology and oxygen content.

Contribution

The study presents an alternative fabrication process for graphene nanopapers using directly reduced graphene oxide, highlighting the effects of thermal annealing on their structure and properties.

Findings

Thermal annealing enhances the thermal and electrical conductivity of the nanopapers.

Absence of oxygen functionalities improves the material's properties.

Morphology of nanoflakes significantly influences the nanopapers' performance.

Abstract

In this study, we report a different strategy to prepare graphene nanopapers from direct vacuum filtration. Instead of the conventional method, i.e. thermal annealing nanopapers at extremely high temperatures prepared from graphene oxide (GO) or partially reduced GO, we fabricate our graphene nanopapers directly from suspensions of fully reduced graphene oxide (RGO), obtained after RGO and thermally annealing at 1700 {\deg}C in vacuum. By using this approach, we studied the effect of thermal annealing on the physical properties of the macroscopic graphene-based papers. Indeed, we demonstrated that the enhancement of the thermal and electrical properties of graphene nanopapers prepared from annealed RGO is strongly influenced by the absence of oxygen functionalities and the morphology of the nanoflakes. Hence, our methodology can be considered as a valid alternative to the classical approach.