Controllable reduction of graphene oxide by electron-beam irradiation

Yu Yang; Liang Chen; De-Yuan Li; Ruo-Bing Yi; Jia-Wei Mo; Ming-Hong Wu; Gang Xu

doi:10.1039/c8ra06797j

Controllable reduction of graphene oxide by electron-beam irradiation

RSC Adv. 2019 Jan 25;9(7):3597-3604. doi: 10.1039/c8ra06797j.

Authors

Yu Yang¹, Liang Chen², De-Yuan Li¹, Ruo-Bing Yi¹, Jia-Wei Mo², Ming-Hong Wu¹, Gang Xu¹

Affiliations

¹ Shanghai Applied Radiation Institute, Shanghai University Shanghai 200444 China mhwu@shu.edu.cn xugang@shu.edu.cn.
² Department of Optical Engineering, Zhejiang A&F University Lin'an Zhejiang 311300 China liang_chen05@126.com.

Abstract

The oxygen content of graphene oxide (GO) is directly related to its physical and chemical properties, such as hydrophilicity, suspension stability, adsorption, and ion-sieving ability of GO membranes. Here, a series of reduced GO (rGO) with C/O atomic ratios from 1.6 to 4.8 were prepared conveniently by electron-beam irradiation (EBI) with irradiation-dose control. Moreover, a single oxygen-containing group, i.e., epoxy or carbonyl, could be retained mainly in the rGO. The interlayer spacing of rGO could be changed from 9.6 Å to 7.4 Å through control of the oxygen content. The prepared rGO exhibited an excellent adsorption effect on Pb(ii) ions, and the max adsorption capacity reached 194.76 mg g^-1 for rGO with a low irradiation dose (5 kGy), which showed that the ratio of oxygen-containing groups is important for improving the adsorption of rGO in aqueous solution. These results indicated that highly efficient, environmentally friendly, and advanced EBI technology has good potential prospects for use in the large-scale production of rGO with precise control of the oxygen content.