Graphene oxide: strategies for synthesis, reduction and frontier applications

Abstract

Till now, several innovative methods have been developed for the synthesis of graphene materials including mechanical exfoliation, epitaxial growth by chemical vapor deposition, chemical reduction of graphite oxide, liquid-phase exfoliation, arc discharge of graphite, in situ electron beam irradiation, epitaxial growth on SiC, thermal fusion, laser reduction of polymers sheets and unzipping of carbon nanotubes etc. Generally large scale graphene nanosheets are reliably synthesized utilising other forms of graphene-based novel materials, including graphene oxide (GO), exfoliated graphite oxide (by thermal and microwave), and reduced graphene oxide. The degree of GO reduction and number of graphene layers are minimized mainly by applying two approaches via chemical or thermal treatments. The promising and excellent properties together with the ease of processibility and chemical functionalization makes graphene based materials specially GO, ideal candidates for incorporation into a variety of advanced functional materials. Chemical functionalization of graphene can be easily achieved, by the introduction of various functional groups. These functional groups help to control and manipulate the graphene surfaces and help to tune the properties of the resulting hybrid materials. Importantly, graphene and its derivatives GO, have been explored in a wide range of applications, such as energy generation/storage, optical devices, electronic and photonic devices, drug delivery, clean energy, and chemical/bio sensors. In this review article, we have incorporated general introduction of GO, their synthesis, reduction and some selected frontier applications.

Hierarchically nanostructured transition metal oxides for supercapacitors

“…Thus, considerable efforts have been made to enhance the SC performance by creating composites of TMOs and carbon materials, such as TMOs/graphene and TMOs/ carbon nanofibers (CFs) [154][155][156][157][158][159][160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167]. The synthesized multi-component composites can maximize the benefits from all components [154][155][156][157][158][159][160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167][168][169].…”

Recent Advances in Effective Reduction of Graphene Oxide for Highly Improved Performance Toward Electrochemical Energy Storage

“…[51,52] Utilization of high energy photoirradiance was also shown to be an effective and energy-efficient way to repair defective RGO structures. [53,54] It has been demonstrated that through significantly lowered structural defects, such highly reduced GO (HRGO) products helped bring about significantly enhanced functional properties for chemical energy storage devices such as metal-ion batteries and supercapacitors (SC), when good crystallinity and associated high electric/ thermal conductivity are essential, as is summarized in Table 1. [55][56][57][58][59] In this work, we focus on reviewing recent advances for the production of HRGO and their applications to chemical energy storage.…”

Realization of a reduced graphene oxide/ZnO nanorod photodetector, suitable for self-powered applications

“…On the other hand, reduced graphene oxide (rGO) can be achieved by simple and low cost synthesis methods, and shows properties similar to graphene sheets. Hence, there are numerous works which have utilized rGO sheets, benefiting from graphene-like properties [10,11].…”