Highly Water-Dispersible Graphene Nanosheets From Electrochemical Exfoliation of Graphite

oleh: Si-Woo Park, Si-Woo Park, Byungkwon Jang, Han Kim, Jimin Lee, Ji Young Park, Sung-Oong Kang, Yong-Ho Choa

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-07-01

Deskripsi

The electrochemical exfoliation of graphite has been considered to be an effective approach for the mass production of high-quality graphene due to its easy, simple, and eco-friendly synthetic features. However, water dispersion of graphene produced in the electrochemical exfoliation method has also been a challenging issue because of the hydrophobic properties of the resulting graphene. In this study, we report the electrochemical exfoliation method of producing water-dispersible graphene that importantly contains the relatively low oxygen content of <10% without any assistant dispersing agents. Through the mild in situ sulfate functionalization of graphite under alkaline electrochemical conditions using a pH buffer, the highly water-dispersible graphene could be produced without any additional separation processes of sedimentation and/or centrifugation. We found the resulting graphene sheets to have high crystalline basal planes, lateral sizes of several μm, and a thickness of <5 nm. Furthermore, the high aqueous dispersion stability of as-prepared graphene could be demonstrated using a multi-light scattering technique, showing very little change in the optical transmittance and the terbiscan stability index over time.