Facile and scalable one-step production of organically modified graphene oxide by a two-phase extraction

Abstract

The time-consuming purification of graphene oxide (GO) including reduction of the excessive ionic strength represents a serious bottleneck for its mass production. Moreover, for the application as a filler in polymer nanocomposites, the hydrophilic GO has to be organophilized by cation exchange, e.g. with alkylammonium. Here, we propose a facile one-step process that produces highly delaminated organically modified GO suspended in various organic solvents and which spares any additional purification steps. The organically modified GO is instead directly extracted from the oxidation mixture into diethyl ether with the help of 1-dodecylamine. The organically modified GO can then be transferred into a broad variety of organic solvents. Elemental analysis shows the extracted GO to be highly pure and atomic force microscopy images suggest that surprisingly, the material was even delaminated.