Solvent-driven electron trapping and mass transport in reduced graphites to access perfect graphene.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27506380.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms12411 and PMC identifier 4987516.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Herein, we report on a significant discovery, namely, the quantitative discharging of reduced graphite forms, such as graphite intercalation compounds, graphenide dispersions and graphenides deposited on surfaces with the simple solvent benzonitrile. Because of its comparatively low reduction potential, benzonitrile is reduced during this process to the radical anion, which exhibits a red colour and serves as a reporter molecule for the quantitative determination of negative charges on the carbon sheets. Moreover, this discovery reveals a very fundamental physical-chemical phenomenon, namely a quantitative solvent reduction induced and electrostatically driven mass transport of K(+) ions from the graphite intercalation compounds into the liquid. The simple treatment of dispersed graphenides suspended on silica substrates with benzonitrile leads to the clean conversion to graphene. This unprecedented procedure represents a rather mild, scalable and inexpensive method for graphene production surpassing previous wet-chemical approaches.