Highly Water-Dispersible Graphene Nanosheets From Electrochemical Exfoliation of Graphite

Abstract

The electrochemical exfoliation of graphite has been considered to be an effective approach for the mass production of high-quality graphene due to its easy, simple, and eco-friendly synthetic features. However, water dispersion of graphene produced in the electrochemical exfoliation method has also been a challenging issue because of the hydrophobic properties of the resulting graphene. In this study, we report the electrochemical exfoliation method of producing water-dispersible graphene that importantly contains the relatively low oxygen content of <10% without any assistant dispersing agents. Through the mild in situ sulfate functionalization of graphite under alkaline electrochemical conditions using a pH buffer, the highly water-dispersible graphene could be produced without any additional separation processes of sedimentation and/or centrifugation. We found the resulting graphene sheets to have high crystalline basal planes, lateral sizes of several μm, and a thickness of <5 nm. Furthermore, the high aqueous dispersion stability of as-prepared graphene could be demonstrated using a multi-light scattering technique, showing very little change in the optical transmittance and the terbiscan stability index over time.