Authors: MOHAMAD FAHRUL RADZI HANIFAH JUHANA JAAFAR MADZLAN AZIZ A F ISMAIL M H D OTHMAN MUKHLIS A RAHMAN
Publish Date: 2015/10/14
Volume: 38, Issue: 6, Pages: 1569-1576
Abstract
The reduction of graphene oxide GO nanosheet is a promising route to produce a stable colloidal dispersion of reduced graphene oxide RGO nanosheets in a large scale The production of RGO nanosheet is one of the important topics in nanotechnology disciplines due to its contribution in various applications such as the platinum catalyst support in direct methanol fuel cell Therefore in this paper the RGO nanosheets were prepared via highly efficient chemical reduction reaction of exfoliated GO nanosheets using sodium oxalate Na2C2O4 as the reducing agent Extensive characterizations have been conducted in terms of structural thermal stability and electrical conductivity properties by means of highresolution transmission microscopy the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy UV–visible spectroscopy 13C NMR and fourpoint probe conductivity measurement The results indicate that most of oxygencontaining functional groups from GO nanosheets have been removed and the RGO3 possess greater thermal stability compared to GO nanosheets The prepared RGO3 shows the highest electrical conductivity at room temperature which is ∼20 × 103 S cm−1 Based on these analyses the plausible mechanism of reduction of GO to RGO by sodium oxalate is well proposedWe would like to acknowledge the Ministry of Education Malaysia and Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation MOSTI for the financial support under Fundamental Research Grant scheme VotRJ13000078094F592 and Science fund Grant VotRJ13000079424S057 respectively Special thanks to Madam Hamitul Asma Ghazali Associate Prof Dr Farediah Ahmad and Prof Dr Mustaffa Shamsuddin for their assistance
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