Reduced Graphene Oxide Produced by a Green Reduction Method and Its Application in Cu2+ Adsorption for Catalyzing the Reduction of 4-Nitrophenol

A green approach for the preparation of a stable reduced graphene oxide (RGO) suspension from graphene oxide (GO) was developed. This method used arginine (Arg) as the reductant and carboxyl methyl cellulose (CMC) as the stabilizing agent. Analysis shows that Arg can efficiently reduce GO at a comparatively low temperature, and CMC adsorbed onto RGO allows a stable RGO aqueous dispersion to be formed. Since Arg and CMC are natural and environmental friendly chemicals, this approach provides a green method to produce stable RGO from GO on a large scale. CMC/RGO foams were fabricated and their adsorption behavior for methylene blue and heavy metal ions was investigated. After CMC/RGO foams were used to adsorb Cu ions, the foams were then treated with sodium borohydride to transform Cu ions into nanoparticles. These Cu nanoparticle-containing CMC/RGO foams showed superior catalytic performance for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol. So this method offers a way to turn a recovered waste material into something useful.