Abstract

In the present work, we use either ethanol or ethylene glycol as reducing agents through the solvothermal method for graphite oxide reduction. A sulfuric acid treatment before the reduction process was also applied to evaluate its influence on the epoxy group ring-opening reaction. Reduced graphene oxide (RGO) samples were obtained with morphology like crumpled sheets. X-ray diffraction analyses (XRD) showed that the RGO produced via ethylene glycol (EG) reduction followed by treatment with sulfuric acid (RGOEGH) presented the largest d-spacing (0.4114 nm). For reduction with ethanol (RGOEt), the d-spacing value was 0.3883 nm. Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results indicated that RGOEt exhibited very low-intensity bands related to oxygenated functional groups, suggesting a high reduction degree, while the sample reduced with EG contained oxygen group bands in the spectrum that disappeared when H2SO4 pretreatment was performed. Thermal gravimetric analyses (TGA) results showed that the samples present high stability and confirmed the reduction process. Moreover, the synthesized RGO sheets were comparable to those produced via more expensive and toxic methodologies.

Highlights

  • Graphene is a two-dimensional material with mechanical and electronic properties that have attracted interest in technological areas and fundamental study

  • The methodology applied to graphene preparation is based on the Hummers and Offeman[10] (1958) experiment, which uses strong oxidants for the exfoliation of graphite and produces graphene oxide (GO), which subsequently undergoes a process of reduction and formation of graphene or reduced graphene oxide (RGO)

  • We describe an RGO production method using a few distinct GO reduction routes by simple alcohols

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Summary

Introduction

Graphene is a two-dimensional material with mechanical and electronic properties that have attracted interest in technological areas and fundamental study It has been probably the most studied material in the last decade and possesses a wide variety of potential applications, such as electrocatalysts[1], nanocomposites[2], sensors[3], batteries[4], photocatalysts[5], supercapacitors[6], bulletproof vests[7], among many others. Evaluating if the use of sulfuric acid can improve the epoxy group ringopening reaction, which is one of the greatest challenges when the solvent or reducing agent can form strong hydrogen bonds, such as EG23

Experimental
GO Reduction
Characterization
Results and Discussions
Conclusions
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