The Effect of Grinding on Optical Band Gap and Urbach Energy of Polypyrrole/Graphene Composites

Abstract

The goal of this study is to better understand the effect of grinding on the Eg of polypyrrole (PPy)/commercial graphene nanoplatelets (xGnP) composites with varying amounts of xGnP. The Eg for direct transition as a function of the xGnP amount was calculated from the Tauc plot. While the average particle size of the composites decreased between 6% and 30%, there was a slight decrement in the Egs. These values changed between 4.02 to 3.87 eV with the increasing amount of xGnP before grinding, and they reached between 3.97 to 3.88 eV after grinding. Moreover, it was determined that the EU was inversely proportional to Eg. These findings suggest that the PPy/xGnP composites could be suitable for several applications, such as photocatalytic and optoelectronic.