Enhancing thermal oxidation and fire resistance of reduced graphene oxide by phosphorus and nitrogen co-doping: Mechanism and kinetic analysis

Abstract

The use of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) in high-temperature oxidization (HTO) environment, is limited by its poor thermal oxidation and fire resistance. In this study phosphorus and nitrogen co-doped reduced graphene oxide (PN-rGO) with high oxidation and fire resistance was prepared by hydrothermal and microwave treatment and its thermal oxidation decomposition kinetics and mechanisms were analyzed. Concisely, PN-rGO presents an increment of 162 °C in the decomposition temperature relative to undoped rGO (WrGO), and excellent fire resistance with only a ∼20% mass loss after burning. Thermal oxidation degradation kinetics reveals that WrGO shows continuously increasing activation energy (E) within a range of 119.7–182.9 kJ/mol, while PN-rGO exhibits almost constant E of ∼171.8 kJ/mol during main degradation stage. Moreover, the improved E at initial stage by phosphorus/nitrogen doping, combining with the char analysis, suggested that the introduction of strong chemical bonds replacing the reactive oxygen-containing groups was the key to preventing the oxidation of rGO. As one of the main properties, the electrical conductivity of PN-rGO is well kept after HTO treatment. This work demonstrates that a doping strategy can effectively expand the application of graphene-based devices in HTO environment.