AVS 56th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Graphene Topical Conference Tuesday Sessions
       Session GR+TF-TuA

Paper GR+TF-TuA10
The Reduction Kinetics of Graphene Oxide Determined by Temperature Programmed Desorption

Tuesday, November 10, 2009, 5:00 pm, Room C3

Session: Graphene: Characterization, Properties, and Applications
Presenter: C.A. Ventrice, Texas State University
Authors: C.A. Ventrice, Texas State University
N.J. Clark, Texas State University
D.A. Field, Texas State University
I. Jung, University of Texas
D. Yang, University of Texas
H. Geisler, Texas State University
R.D. Piner, University of Texas
R.S. Ruoff, University of Texas
Correspondent: Click to Email
Graphene oxide, which is an electrical insulator, shows promise for use in several technological applications. For instance, individual, monolayer, graphene oxide platelets could be used as dielectric layers in nanoscale electronic devices. Since the electrical, optical, and mechanical properties of graphene oxide can be controlled by chemical modification, films composed of layers of graphene oxide platelets may be used as the active region of chemical sensors. In principle, graphene oxide films could also be used as a precursor for the formation of large-scale graphene films by either thermal or chemical reduction of the graphene oxide. In order to determine the thermal stability and reduction kinetics of graphene oxide, temperature program desorption measurements have been performed on multilayer films of graphene oxide deposited on SiO2/Si(100) substrates. The graphene oxide was exfoliated from the graphite oxide source material by slow-stirring in aqueous solution, which produces single-layer platelets with an average lateral size of ~10 μ m. From the temperature programmed desorption measurements, it was determined that the primary desorption products of the graphene oxide films for temperatures up to 300 ° C are H2O, CO2, and CO, with only trace amounts of O2 being detected. Since carbon is lost during the reduction process in UHV, the addition of other carbon containing reactants during the thermal reduction will be needed to regain the electrical and mechanical properties of pristine graphene. An activation energy of 32 ±4 kcal/mol ( 1.4 eV/molecule) was determined by assuming an Arrhenius dependence for the decomposition process.