A Facile Approach to the Hydrothermal Synthesis of Graphene

In this work, we demonstrate a fast hydrothermal approach for the facile synthesis of graphene (GN) from reduction of graphene oxide (GO) in the presence of reducing agents (sodium hydroxide, NaOH). The obtained GN was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Raman spectroscopic techniques (Raman) and thermogravimetric analysis (TG). It was observed that preparation periods of GN are significantly reduced in the strong alkali environment, as a result of rapid reduction reaction under the conditions of high temperature and pressure in hydrothermal reaction autoclave. Interestingly, it was also found that the obtained GN could be easily separated and purified, which could be beneficial to the mass production of GN. In addition, the characterization results showed that GN has extraordinary improvement of thermal stability. The facile synthesis method developed in this study may facilitate the potential applications of GN-based composites and devices.