Graphite to Graphene via Graphene Oxide: An Overview on Synthesis, Properties, and Applications

Abstract

This work represents a state-of-the-art technique developed for the preparation of graphene from graphite-metal electrodes by the arc-discharge method carried out in a continuous flow of water. Because of continuous arcing of graphite-metal electrodes, the graphene sheets were observed in water with uniformity and little damage. These nanosheets were subjected to various purification steps such as acid treatment, oxidation, water washing, centrifugation, and drying. The pure graphene sheets were analyzed using Raman spectrophotometry, x-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission-scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and tunneling electron microscopy (TEM). Peaks of Raman spectra were recorded at (1300-1400 cm À1 ) and (1500-1600 cm À1 ) for weak D-band and strong G-band, respectively. The XRD pattern showed 85.6% crystallinity of pure graphite, whereas pure graphene was 66.4% crystalline. TEM and FE-SEM micrographs revealed that graphene sheets were overlapped to each other and layer-by-layer formation was also observed. Beside this research work, we also reviewed recent developments of graphene and related nanomaterials along with their preparations, properties, functionalizations, and potential applications.

A review on the mechanical, electrical and EMI shielding properties of carbon nanotubes and graphene reinforced polycarbonate nanocomposites

“…Graphene has incredible properties as the lightest and strongest nanomaterial, compared with its ability to conduct heat and electricity better than other nanomaterials. Because of their excellent properties, it can be included into a large number of applications . Graphene has low mass density as compared with the classical fillers and also have high electrical and thermal conductivity, due to the sp 2 hybridized carbon atoms in the monolayer graphenes (Figure ).…”

“…Graphene is estimated to be 200 times stronger than steel, is as flexible as rubber, and conducts heat and electricity extremely efficiently. Besides, unlike other graphitic carbon nanofillers, such as CNTs and CF, which usually require costly and complex apparatus for the production, as well as high energy consumption methods such as chemical vapor decomposition, arc discharging, and laser ablation, high‐purity graphene can also be produced from the natural graphite using relatively suitable methods . Graphene sheets show almost all extraordinary properties of CNTs while they are significantly cheaper than CNTs .…”

Physico‐mechanical properties of nano‐polystyrene‐decorated graphene oxide–epoxy composites

“…Therefore, graphene is a basic building block of graphitic materials having all dimensionalities and used in the synthesis of a variety of composite blend films and polymer nanocomposites. However, graphene sheets have a high specific surface area, and tend to form irreversible agglomerates or even restack to form graphite through van der Waals interactions . So, many scientists have prepared hybrid nanostructures of GO with different organic and inorganic materials to overcome this problem of GO.…”

Preparation and analysis of multi-layered hybrid nanostructures

“…The combination of multi-dimensional NM or layered NS were used to prepare hybrid nanostructures with many advantages due to each kind of NM or NS (Bouakaz et al, 2015;Oraon et al, 2015;Alsharaeh et al, 2016;Chen et al, 2016;; Pérez del Pino et al, 2016,Kavinkumar et al, 2016Zhao et al, 2016).These kinds of hybrid nanostructures with exceptional properties are effective and they were reported for the potential applications (Latorre-Sanchez et al, 2012;Lonkar et al, 2015).Many hybrid materialswere reported, which can bemade usingdifferent NS.But recently organic-inorganic hybrid NS haveshown considerable attention (Mishra et al, 2010;. Among the various organic NS materials, graphene oxide (GO)has a tremendous interest in a scientific research.Because GO istwo dimensional (2D) andconductinglayered NMand it consists of one atom-thick planar sheets of sp 2 -bonded honeycomb structure of carbon atoms (Low et al, 2015).GO possesses extraordinary mechanical, thermal, electronic and physical properties, (Hansora et al, 2015;Lonkar et al, 2015),more importantly it contains a range of reactiveoxygen functional groups (e.g., hydroxyl groups) .Therefore, GO wasused to prepareorganic-inorganic hybrid NS (Wu et al, 2012;Nandi et al, 2013;Esmaeili et al, 2014;Yadav et al, 2014;Angelopoulou et al, 2015, Low et al, 2015Jain et al,2016).Many scientists havepreparedhybrid NS usingdifferent metal and inorganic NM filled with GO, e.g., Titanium oxide-graphene (Heet al, 2016;Pérez del Pino et al,2016;Zhao et al,2016),Manganese-nickel mixed oxide/graphene (Latorre Sanchez et al,2015), Organomontmorillonite/graphene (Bouakaz et al 2015;Oraon et al, 2015),Calciumcarbonate/GO ,Silver nanoparticle/GO (Kavinkumaret al, 2016),Cobalt oxide nanoparticles/reduced GO(Alsharaeh et al,2016),Zinc oxide nanorods/graphene ...…”