Exploration of Liquid-Phase Exfoliation for Graphene Production from Bulk Graphite

The demand for sustainable material in technological industries have sparked the discovery of a wonderful material known as GRAPHENE, including its efficiency in its application in various sectors because of its unique properties ranging from electrical, mechanical and thermal properties. However, the conventional methods has cause the researchers in detecting its chemical structure and its temperature which are hazardous to human health and environment. This research deals with eco-friendly method of synthesis using Liquid-phase exfoliation which emerged as a prominent approach for graphene production due its scalability, cost-effectiveness and environmental friendly characteristics. This method of synthesis is employed in order to optimize liquid-phase exfoliation using acetone and deionized water. The scanning Electron Microscope analysed at a magnification of 5µm which reveals crumpled and layered-graphene sheets, which is due to the high flexibility of graphene sheets, which tend to fold, wrinkle and overlap during the exfoliation and drying process while Raman spectroscopy unveiled the sample displayed with three characteristics features called the D-band which is visible at approximately 1350cm¯¹ where the peak indicates the presence of defects within the graphene structure, and the G-band centered around 1580cm¯¹ corresponding to sp²hybridized carbon atoms in the graphene sheet, its strong intensity confirms the presence of graphitic domains and highlighted the graphitic structure of the exfoliated graphene, and the 2D-band produced at 2700cm¯¹ was observed and indicates the few-layer nature of the graphene which are sharp and symmetric while X-Ray Diffraction data confirms successful exfoliated graphite into few-layer graphene from the peak at 22.1° (002 plane) with broadening reflects reduced stacking order and increased interlayer spacing where the absence of sharp peaks indicates the material transitional from crystalline graphite to disorder, few-layer graphene