Green synthesis of graphene oxide by seconds timescale water electrolytic oxidation

Graphene oxide is highly desired for printing electronics, catalysis, energy storage, separation membranes, biomedicine, and composites. However, the present synthesis methods depend on the reactions of graphite with mixed strong oxidants, which suffer from explosion risk, serious environmental pollution, and long-reaction time up to hundreds of hours. Here, we report a scalable, safe and green method to synthesize graphene oxide with a high yield based on water electrolytic oxidation of graphite. The graphite lattice is fully oxidized within a few seconds in our electrochemical oxidation reaction, and the graphene oxide obtained is similar to those achieved by the present methods. We also discuss the synthesis mechanism and demonstrate continuous and controlled synthesis of graphene oxide and its use for transparent conductive films, strong papers, and ultra-light elastic aerogels. Graphene oxide is a graphene derivative showing wide applications, but it suffers from harsh synthetic conditions and long reaction time. Pei et al. show a green electrochemical method to fully oxidize the graphite lattice in a few seconds, which is over 100 times faster than existing methods.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Nature Communications

• Publication date

  2018-01-10

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Materials Science, Chemistry

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/s41467-017-02479-zPMID 29321501PMCID 5762692
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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