Green Routes for Graphene Oxide Reduction and Self- Assembled Graphene Oxide Micro- and Nanostructures Production

Abstract

Graphene-derived materials are currently studied because of their actual and projected applications. Among them, graphene oxide (GO) promises for outstanding applications as it can be prepared at large scale by simple, scalable, and low-cost techniques. The existent chemical methods based on the graphite exfoliation (phase solution and Hum-mers based) produce highly functionalized graphene, i.e., GO-like materials that con-verts into reduced GO (rGO) after a reduction treatment. The present work presents the current scenario on the GO green reduction methods, on the development of hierarchi-cal carbon-based structures by the self-assembly of GO sheets at interfaces, and on rGO-based hybrid nanocomposites. It is worth noting that, to date, the production and application of graphene-related materials are the fastest-growing research areas.