Tuning Optical Properties of Graphene Oxide under Compressive Strain Using Wet Ball Milling Method

Abstract

We report on the effect of compressive stress on the optical properties of graphene oxide using a wet ball milling technique. For this purpose, graphene oxide was prepared using the modified Hummer’s method and subsequently processed with wet ball milling. X-ray diffraction infers a peak at 9.655˚ which is the allowed reflection for the graphene oxide. The Williamson-Hall method is used to quantify the strain on the 10 hrs and 20 hrs ball milled graphene oxide samples and is found to be 4.2% and 4.8% respectively. Although we applied strain on the graphene oxide, it actually helped to reduce the defects which are confirmed by the intensity drop-off of D-peak in Raman spectroscopy. Indeed there exists a band gap alteration of 0.14 eV for an applied compressive strain of ~4.8%, hinting that the reduction in oxygen functional groups and the same is confirmed with the Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR)...