The Role of Reduced Graphene Oxide Concentration as Ablated Material on Optical Properties of Graphene Quantum Dots

Abstract

We report the synthesize of Graphene Quantum Dots (GQDs) using ablation method with reduced Graphene Oxide (rGO) solution as a starting material. We have varied the concentration of rGO as following: 0.5, 2, 5 mg/ml and then have ablated them using 800 nm Ti-Sapphire femtosecond laser to obtain GQDs. From the UV-Vis data, we observed that the more concentration of rGO is being ablated, the more secondary absorption peak at 255.1 nm appeared. This secondary absorption peak is a characteristic of n-π* bonding due to the presence of oxygen defect which occurs as a result of the interaction between the laser and the water in rGO solution. We conclude that the population of oxigen defect in GQDs is increasing, following the increase of rGO concentration and could alter the optical properties of GQD. On the other hand, using Tauc’s plot, we confirm that the increase of rGO concentration as the ablated material does not alter GQDs optical band gap. However, it will slightly reduce both, direct and indirect Oxygen defect related optical band gap.