Facile Synthesis and Characterization of Reduced Graphene Oxide Produced with Green and Conventional Reductants

Abstract

In this work, we report a facile and green reduction method to synthesize reduced graphene oxide (rGO) sheet by using epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and hydroiodic acid (HI) simultaneously as a reduction agents and investigate its efficiency as an electrode. Two steps reduction and modification of graphene oxide GO with epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) as a green reductant and hydroiodic acid (HI) as strong chemical reducing agent are investigated in this work. The indication of the reduction efficiency of rGO surface was determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results showed that using both of the reductants simultaneously was effective for removing oxygen-containing functional groups in GO to obtain rGO. The rGO obtained from these two-step processes had C/O ratio of about ∼10.26 and conductivity of 2385 S/m. The results also show that the presence of EGCG in the final rGo sheet provides active sites for furthered modification of rGO such as decorating it with metal nanoparticles in a single-step chemical deposition. These features will facilitate its further use as a flexible electrode in composite materials of conductors and many other applications.