Abstract and subjects
This chapter introduces a peculiar carbon compound previously named as graphitic acid, graphite oxide (GO), or more recently, graphene oxide (GO). It is basically a wrinkled two-dimensional carbon sheet with various oxygenated functional groups on its basal plane and peripheries, with thickness of around 1 nm and lateral dimensions varying from a few nanometers to several microns. It was first prepared by the British chemist B.C. Brodie in 1859, and became very popular in the scientific community during the last half decade, simply because it was believed to be an important precursor to graphene (a single atomic layer of graphite, the discovery of which won Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics). Several strategies have been introduced to reduce GO back to graphene; however, in this chapter we mainly focus on GO itself, and more relevantly, its synthesis, chemical structure, physical and chemical properties, and possible applications. We emphasize here that, despite its strong relevance to graphene, GO also has its own scientific significance as a basic form of oxidized carbon and technological importance as a platform for all kinds of derivatives and composites that have already demonstrated various interesting applications. The synthesis recipes include the Brodie and Staudenmaier methods (Sect. 15.1.1), the Hummers method and its modification (Sect. 15.1.2), and the Tour method (Sect. 15.1.3). Section 15.2 covers characterization methods together with chemical structure models as well as physical properties of graphite oxide. In the application section (Sect. 15.3) several examples are given, followed by concluding remarks in Sect. 15.4.