Effect of glass surface treatments on the deposition of highly transparent reduced graphene oxide films by dropcasting method

Abstract

Abstract Transparent conductive materials are important in many applications such as flat panel displays, solar cells, touch screen and smartphones. Films today generally rely on indium tin oxide (ITO). However, indium is rare and its price is rising as demand soars. For this reason, reduced graphene oxide (RGO) is gaining deep interest for its potential to replace ITO to fabricate transparent conductive films. Unfortunately, obtaining well-dispersed RGO flakes is difficult and generally, toxic solvents and heat treatments are employed. In this work, we demonstrate a simple approach to produce reduced graphene oxide (RGO) thin films on glass substrate at room temperature by using a nontoxic solvent. The films RGO colloidal suspensions were deposited on simple and plasma treated glass substrates by drop casting. The results indicate that the transmittance and the conductivity of the films have a linear relationship with the films thickness deposited on the substrates. The conductivity of RGO films deposited on plasma treated glass is higher with respect to substrate without any grafted functional group. The best conductivity obtained for RGO depositions on piranha cleaned glass, treated in an ammonia plasma is 10.4 S cm−1 and the transmittance is 70% at 550 nm which are among the best results if compared to similar non annealed RGO films.