Graphene Oxide: Synthesis and Characterization

Abstract

Graphene oxide is single or few atomic layers of graphene attached to oxygen-containing groups. It is a flexible material and is prepared by the energetic oxidation of graphite. Graphene oxide has a lot of potential due to easy synthesis, cost-effectiveness and scope for mass scale production. It is one of the important materials for the futuristic memory devices. The band gap of graphene oxide can be easily tuned by varying the oxidation level. It is ideal as an electrical insulator as well as semiconductor, when it is fully oxidized and partially oxidized respectively. Graphene oxide is produced by the oxidation of graphite followed by exfoliation of oxidized graphite. Various methods for the synthesis of graphene oxide are discussed in this chapter. The reduction of graphene oxide to produce reduced graphene oxide is extremely important. The process used for reduction has a large impact on the quality of the reduced graphene oxide produced and therefore will determine how close reduced graphene oxide will come, in terms of structure and properties, to pristine graphene. For the industrial applications, there is a need to utilize large quantities of graphene, and reduced graphene oxide is the most obvious solution due to the relative ease in creating sufficient quantities of graphene to desired quality levels. Although, there are many reports on the reduction of graphene oxide available in the literature, the complete removal of oxygen-containing groups is still a challenge. This chapter presents a review of the research work reported on the synthesis and characterization of graphene oxide.