Fabrication of Various Conducting Polymers Using Graphene Oxide as a Chemical Oxidant

Abstract

Recently, using graphene oxide (GO) for "carbocatalysis" has great attraction as a novel application of graphene-based nanomaterials and expected to opens a host of possibilities for chemical synthesis because of the abundance of natural carbon sources, as well as the low density, extensive chemical functionalization, hydrophilicity, low cost, and ease of preparation.Here, we demonstrate that the GO can play a role as a chemical oxidant for various CPs (polythiophene, polyaniline, and polypyrrole), and diverse graphene-CP composites (graphenepolythiophene, graphene-polyaniline, and graphene-polypyrrole) can simply and rapidly be synthesized by using the GO as both graphene precursor and chemical oxidant. The UV-vis analysis confirms that the GO has successfully polymerized the CPs and been transformed to reduced graphene oxide (RGO). The SEM and TEM analyses show that the CPs have successfully been coated on the few-layered graphene sheets. Raman analysis and series of FT-IR analyses have been conducted to survey what functional group in the GO polymerized the monomers, and they reveal that hydroxyl and epoxy groups in the GO polymerized the monomers. Finally, plausible polymerization mechanisms have specifically and deeply proposed based on the IR result, classical radical polymerization mechanisms of the CPs, and widely adopted thermal reduction mechanism of the GO.The conducting polymers (CPs), prepared by typical oxidative polymerization method, 1-3 has attracted great attention in vast fields of energy storage/conversion, 4-8 electronic, 9-11 and biological 12-16 applications due to their fascinating properties such as unique redox behavior, tunable electrical conductivity, inherent biocompatibility, and high flexibility. 4-16 Despite a large number of advantages, however, inferior properties of CPs (e.g., low electrochemical stability, weak mechanical strength, etc.) often hinder their practical usage. 12,17,18 The need to overcome this limitation has led to the growing interest in hybridization of CPs with other additives. 12,17,18 For example, many kinds of nanostructured carbon materials (e.g., carbon nanotube, mesoporous carbon, etc.) have been incorporated with CPs to produce composites with desirable properties (e.g., enhanced thermal stability, increased electrochemical stability, or improved mechanical strength). [17][18][19][20][21][22] In particular, of the various nanostructured carbon additives, graphene has recently drawn significant attention because of its exceptional electrical, thermal, electrochemical, and mechanical properties. 17,18,23 With the burgeoning interest in the graphene additives, indeed, combination of graphene and CP has extensively been studied and the produced graphene-CP composites have shown the superior properties compared with other carbon-CP composites through the remarkable properties of graphene and synergistic effects between CP and graphene. [24][25][26][27][28] Majorly, the graphene-CP composites have been fabricated by following two methods; (i) mixing of preform...

Highly Efficient Metal‐Free Visible Light Driven Photocatalyst: Graphene Oxide/Polythiophene Composite

“…When the ratio is 1:18, PTh spheres are obviously observed to stack on the surface of GO flakes (Figure S2c‐f). The TEM image (Figure d) also clearly shows that PTh agglomerates have formed on the surface of GO with the GO/Th ratio of 1:2, similar to previous observations . It is clear that GO strongly affects the growth of PTh formed by polymerization of Th monomers, making it form flaky sheets on the surface of GO, indicating strong interaction exists between them.…”

Ice-interface assisted large-scale preparation of polypyrrole/graphene oxide films for all-solid-state supercapacitors

“…On the one hand, perhaps GO could be partial reduction during in situ polymerization to improve conductivity. 45 On the other hand, the conjugation length of PPy could be increasing under the inuence of GO, resulting in conducting particle delocalization more easily. 35 The improved electrical conductivity facilitated rapid charge transport at the interface, leading to better energy storage behaviors.…”

Well‐functioned photovoltaics based on nanofibers composed of PBDT‐TIPS‐DTNT‐DT and graphenic precursors thermally modified by polythiophene, polyaniline and polypyrrole

“…The synthetic procedures for graphene‐polythiophene (GPTh), graphene‐polyaniline (GPANI) and graphene‐polypyrrole (GPPy) are reported in the literature . The mentioned nano‐hybrids were synthesized by applying GO as initiator.…”