The characterisation of commercial 2D carbons: graphene, graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide

Albers, P. W., Leich, V., Ramirez-Cuesta, A. J., Cheng, Y., Hönig, J. and Parker, S. F. (2022) The characterisation of commercial 2D carbons: graphene, graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide. Materials Advances, 3(6), pp. 2810-2826. (doi: 10.1039/d1ma01023a)

Abstract

In this work we have comprehensively characterised 13 products from commercial suppliers that are claimed to be 2D materials: graphene, graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide. The techniques used have investigated the materials from the macroscale to the atomic scale. The results are consistent across all length scales: none of the products meet the ISO definition of “a single layer of carbon atoms”. Rather, they are largely nanographite with a small percentage of single layer material present. One of the techniques used was inelastic neutron scattering (INS) spectroscopy. INS enables the materials to be examined in the C–H/O–H stretch region without the complications of electrical anharmonicity that bedevil infrared spectroscopy. The spectra clearly show that most of the hydrogen is present as sp2 C–H; sp3 C–H is either absent or present as a minority species. This provides strong support for the Lerf and Klinowski model of graphene oxide. The spectra also show that the number of hydroxyls present is small, indicating that most of the oxygen is present as epoxides or carbonyls.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: The STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is thanked for access to neutron beam facilities (RB1920447).69 AJRC and YC are supported by the Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, US DOE, under Contract No. DEAC0500OR22725 with UT Battelle, LLC. Computing resources for DFT simulations were made available through the VirtuES and the ICE-MAN projects, funded by Laboratory Directed Research and Development program and Compute and Data Environment for Science (CADES) at ORNL.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Parker, Dr Stewart
• Authors: Albers, P. W., Leich, V., Ramirez-Cuesta, A. J., Cheng, Y., Hönig, J., and Parker, S. F.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Chemistry
• Journal Name: Materials Advances
• Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
• ISSN: 2633-5409
• ISSN (Online): 2633-5409
• Published Online: 11 February 2022
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2022 The Author(s)
• First Published: First published in Materials Advances 3(6): 2810-2826
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons license