Thermally stable, solvent resistant and flexible graphene oxide paper

Abstract

The ability of graphene oxide (GO) aqueous suspensions to form robust GO paper is largely improved by basification of the suspension before processing. In particular, casting procedures, which are generally unsuitable for production of robust GO paper, become suitable for basified GO (b-GO) suspensions, leading to dense and free-standing papers, which are also highly flexible. Thermal or microwave treatments of paper from b-GO suspensions (b-GO paper) easily produce loss in stacking order of graphene oxide layers, with maintenance of a high degree of parallelism (0.6 < f ≡ orientation function < 0.7) with respect to the paper surface. Differently from usual GO papers, b-GO papers maintain their dimensional integrity when thermally treated or when dispersed in organic solvents or in aqueous solutions. Many relevant b-GO features (improved film ability by casting, maintenance of film integrity and reduced deoxygenation by heating and improved solvent resistance) can be rationalized by formation of covalent bridges between GO layers. Infrared spectra and simple chemical arguments suggest that these covalent bridges between GO layers could be mainly constituted by ether bonds.