Thermal reduction of graphene oxide in the presence of carbon suboxide

This work focused on the kinetic analysis of the thermal reduction reaction of graphene oxide (GO) both with and without carbon suboxide (C3O2) by using Borchardt-Daniels, Kissinger, and Ozawa models. The effect of C3O2 on the thermal decomposition of GO was investigated by thermogravimetry (TG), derivative thermogravimetry (DTG), and differential scanning colorimetry (DSC) analysis. It was noticed that C3O2 tends to increase the chemical reactivity of GO due to the decreasing of the reaction activation energy Ea. The apparent reaction order is determined to be 0.7 for the thermal decomposition of both studied samples. This value evidences the complex mechanism of the thermal decomposition of GO that includes consecutive zero-order and first-order processes. Finally, by comparing the enthalpy values of GO thermal decomposition, it was determined that GO sample with the additive of C3O2 releases a lower amount of energy comparing to that of pure GO during the thermal reduction.