Solvent-Based Exfoliation via Sonication of Graphitic Materials for Graphene Manufacture

Graphene, a new 2D material, is gaining a lot of attention because of its remarkable mechanical, electrical, chemical, thermal, and optical properties. Graphene synthesis procedures can follow two different strategies named as "bottom up" and "top down". In the first one, a carbonaceous carbon material is used to deposite graphene over a substrate and, in the second one, graphite is used as raw material to obtain graphene using different methods. Inside the top down strategy, exfoliation of carbon nanomaterials, both graphite and graphene oxide, is considered as a cheap and simple method to synthesize graphene. Graphite exfoliation can be conducted with both aqueous and organic methods. On the other hand, different alternatives to produce graphene using graphene oxide as the raw material can be followed, which are based on either the presonication of graphite, as a previous step for manufacturing graphene, or the sonication of the synthesized graphite oxide, leading to graphene oxide.