Characterization of reduced graphene oxide obtained from vacuum-assisted low-temperature exfoliated graphite

Graphene consists of sheets of two-dimensional allotrope carbons and is a basic element of graphite. Herein, reduced graphene oxide (rGO) were exfoliated from graphite material under vacuum and low temperature and characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray powder diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The results revealed that the obtained rGO is morphologically well structured in the size ranges of 1�3 µm and smooth. An apparent reduction of O1s with XPS analysis was noticed. The crystalline nature of rGO was evidenced by (0 0 2) and (0 0 4) orientations. FTIR has generated clear peak stretches at 1018, 1092 and 1628 cm�1. Further, UV�visible and Raman spectroscopic optical analyses displayed the apparent peak profiles at appropriate positions. The appearance of G and D bands with the respective G/D ratio of peak intensity in Raman analysis aids to estimate D/G to be ~ 0.8. The calculated ratio with 2D/G is to be 1.7 with a single layer of graphene. Overall, the results of this study demonstrated that rGO can be obtained simply by vacuum assisted a low thermal exfoliation. © 2018 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature