Chemistry with Graphene and Graphene Oxide - Challenges for Synthetic Chemists

TL;DR

This review discusses the challenges in synthesizing and chemically modifying graphene and graphene oxide, emphasizing the importance of understanding their structures and functionalization methods for practical applications.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the structure, synthesis, and functionalization techniques of graphene and graphene oxide, clarifying terminology and highlighting recent advances.

Findings

Detailed description of graphene and graphene oxide structures

Summary of synthetic methods for production

Overview of chemical functionalization approaches

Abstract

The chemical production of graphene as well as its controlled wet- chemical modification is a challenge for synthetic chemists and the characterization of reaction products requires sophisticated analytic methods. In this review we first describe the structure of graphene and graphene oxide. We then outline the most important synthetic methods which are used for the production of these carbon based nanomaterials. We summarize the state-of-the-art for their chemical functionalization by non-covalent and covalent approaches. We put special emphasis on the differentiation of the terms graphite, graphene, graphite oxide and graphene oxide. An improved fundamental knowledge about the structure and the chemical properties of graphene and graphene oxide is an important prerequisite for the development of practical applications.