Pristine graphene: functionalization, fabrication, and nanocomposite materials

Abstract

Graphene has a wide range of unique properties including high carrier mobility, optical transparency, and exceptional electrical and thermal conductivity. The interest in graphene has been largely fueled by its potential to revolutionize a number of technologically important areas including materials science, biomedical science, and energy. Despite its high potentials, major challenges still remain. These include poor solubility, intrinsic zero band gap energy, low reactivity and the availability of well-defined pristine graphene in large quantity, which have hampered the rapid development of graphene-based functional devices. Many of these challenges can be potentially addressed through chemical functionalization of the material. Covalent functionalization can enhance graphene’s properties including opening its band gap, tuning conductivity, improving solubility, and enhancing the properties of graphene-based composite materials. This paper discusses our work on the chemical functionalization of pristine graphene, and synthesis of graphene-nanoparticle composite materials and three-dimensional graphene (3DG)-TiO2 nanocomposite photocatalyst. In photocatalytic CO2 reduction, the 3DG-TiO2 nanocomposite demonstrated excellent activity, about 11 times higher than TiO2 nanoparticles.