Graphene, a single layer of sp2 carbons, attracted much recent attention due to its excellent electrical, mechanical and thermal properties as well as it's wide range of promising applications. Mechanical exfoliation and epitaxial chemical vapor deposition are the two common methods available to produce graphene from graphite. As these methods are less effective for large scale manufacturing, the most common approach to exfoliate graphite is the use of strong oxidizing agents. These strong oxidizing agents convert graphite to single layer or few layer graphene oxide (GO). In our lab we used modified Hummer's method to synthesize GO from graphite powder. The newly synthesized GO was characterized using TEM, XRD, TGA, DSC and Raman to evaluate the purity of the sample. In addition, we expanded our research to include decoration of GO with Ag nanoparticles using sonochemistry. In a typical synthesis, GO was mixed with Ag acetate in the presence of DMF and sonicated. The final product was recovered using rotary evaporation and cleaned by washing with ethanol and water. TEM analysis showed that the sonochemical method was capable of producing well-decorated GO with Ag nanoparticles with an average size of sub-5 nm. However, in the absence of sonochemistry (i.e., strictly thermal) the nanoparticles were significantly larger and the GO were less decorated. Furthermore, we controlled the Ag nanoparticle loading on GO sheets by changing silver acetate concentration in synthesis. In this presentation, these results will be discussed within the context of possible mechanisms for the efficient decoration of GO with Ag nanoparticles using sonochemistry.

Synthesis and characterization of metal decorated graphene oxide using sonochemistry

244th National Meeting (2012)

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