Preparation and Qualification of Reduced Graphene Oxide by Different Reduction Methods

Recently, reduced graphene oxide (RGO) has been considered a very interesting material for many electronic devices. In this paper, graphite powder (G) was used as a core starting material for the preparation of RGO powder samples. Graphite was first oxidized using the improved Hummers method to produce graphite oxide. Graphite oxide was then exfoliated into graphene oxide (GO) by stirring the samples with distilled water mixed with hydrogen peroxide at low temperatures. The reduction process for GO was carried out using various methods, including ascorbic acid (AA) with and without sonication and ultraviolet irradiation, to finally produce reduced graphene oxide powder (RGOs). The synthesized RGO samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) techniques. Electrical conductivity measurements were performed for the RGO samples. A comparative study was performed between the synthesized samples and other published works. A new quality factor (Q) [1] is established based on the characterization results of the Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction measurements. Electrical conductivity as high as 5.6 x 10- 3 S/cm was obtained for RGO-3 sample, and a quality factor of 0.0945 was calculated, which is comparable to other published works.