Sugar blowing-assisted reduction and interconnection of graphene oxide into three-dimensional porous graphene

Abstract

Assembly of individual graphene sheets into macroscopic three-dimensional (3D) graphene is very important for the applications of graphene. In this paper, sugar blowing-assisted thermal reduction and interconnection of graphene oxide is developed to synthesize three-dimensional porous graphene (3D-PG). In the process, NH4Cl added in graphene oxide solutions acts as a blowing agent, while glucose added in the solutions can enhance the bubble burst and the cross link of graphene sheets. We also describe the use of the 3D-PG films as electrodes of supercapacitor. It was demonstrated that the 3D-PG films display a high capacitance about 115 F/g at a scan rate of 10 mV/s. More importantly, because the addition of glucose could strengthen the interconnectivities among graphene sheets, further accelerating the charge transport, the 3D-PG films show better power performance than the self-assembled graphene hydrogel (SGH). Our results demonstrate that sugar blowing-assisted thermal reduction of graphene oxide is a facile and effective route for the preparation of 3D-PG with graphene sheets tightly glued.