A Chemical Route for Production of Graphene

Graphene sheets offer extraordinary electronic, thermal and mechanical properties and areexpected to find a variety of applications. Synthesis of this material in large quantity and with highquality has been a challenge. Here we report production of graphene via a facile, chemical methodwhich can be used for large quantity production of graphene. Expanded graphite was used as aprecursor in a chemical route involving graphite oxidation, ultrasonic exfoliation and chemicalreduction. X-ray diffraction results showed complete oxidation of graphite. Fourier transforminfrared spectroscopy was used to discover the presence of oxidizing agents and the removal ofthem after the reduction. Transmission electron microscopy observation showed that thesynthesized graphene had the size of tens to hundreds of square nanometers. With regard to thesize of the primary graphite it can be concluded that the product has the least amount of defects.Also the transparency of the particles was related to the few layers of the produced graphene

Keywords:

Graphene , Chemical Synthesis , Expanded Graphite , Exfoliation