Multifunctional low temperature reduced graphite oxides for high performance supercapacitors and SERS applications

Abstract

Graphene has been extensively investigated in the field of energy storage and optoelectronic applications due to its unique properties like high surface area, good electrical conductivity etc. Here, in the present work, we have synthesized few layer graphene via reduction of graphite oxide at low temperature (100 °C) using hydrazine hydrate and urea for energy storage. We studied the morphological changes occurred in prepared reduced graphite oxide (rGO) samples and activated to achieve better wettability for high capacitive performance and sustainability. The maximum specific capacitance of 300 Fg−1 was observed for activated electrode of rGO reduced with hydrazine hydrate (rGO-HH), while activated electrode of rGO reduced with urea (rGO-Urea) showed specific capacitance of 220 F g−1 at 1 Ag−1 discharge current in aqueous electrolyte. To the best of our knowledge, our rGO-HH shows higher capacitive performance and sustainability than other reports for the reduction process below 150 °C. Additionally, we have successfully demonstrated the suitability of prepared rGO samples as a substrate for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to detect organic pollutant (Rhodamine 6G) at micro molar concentration for environmental remediation.