A Facile Chemical Reduction of Graphene-Oxide Using p-Toluene Sulfonic Acid and Fabrication of Reduced Graphene-Oxide Film

Abstract

We report a cost effective and easy chemical reduction method for exfoliated individual graphene oxide (GO) and GO paper using p-toluene sulfonic acid (PTSA) under mild conditions. Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photon spectroscopy (XPS), thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis were performed to investigate the quality of GO reduction. Data resulting from the spectral analysis suggest that the reduction method using PTSA is an efficient method to remove oxygen functionalities in the GO and also as an alternative to commonly used reducing agents. We also fabricated chemically reduced GO (RGO) film from GO film using this method. The RGO film exhibits an electrical conductivity of about 10587 Sm⁻¹. These results suggest that this method is very useful for the reduction of GO and GO film or paper using PTSA in a solution process for flexible electronics due to its facile, efficient and cost-effective features.