Overview of Graphene Oxide Reduction: Focusing on Plasma Strategies
The reduction of graphene oxide is a key breakthrough for the industrial application of graphene. Conventional chemical and thermal routes often involve hazardous reagents or high temperatures, while microwave‐ and laser‐based techniques, despite offering rapid bulk heating and precise patterning, remain constrained by their underlying mechanisms. Low‐temperature plasma technology, with its green, efficient, and precisely controllable characteristics, provides a promising pathway to address this challenge. This article systematically reviews graphene oxide reduction technologies, with a particular emphasis on plasma‐based strategies, analyzing liquid‐phase and gas‐phase plasma mechanisms and comparing reducing and inert atmospheres in terms of reaction pathways, reduction efficiency, and structure–property relationships of reduced graphene oxide. A key insight is that, compared with flammable reducing gases (H 2 , CH 4 ), plasma reduction in a pure inert atmosphere (e.g., Ar) offers superior safety and environmental benefits. High plasma activity, uniform discharge, and high‐quality graphene can be achieved by optimizing electrode structures (three‐electrode dielectric barrier discharge) and dual‐power‐source modes (nanosecond pulse/AC). Future work should integrate inert‐atmosphere plasma with other advanced reduction strategies to address challenges related to process scalability, reproducibility, and device‐level integration, accelerating industrialization in flexible electronics and energy storage devices.
Authors
- Kai Wu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5016-0251)
- Shujie Wu
- Jialiang Huang
- Zheng Wu
- Juanjuan Ji
- Chixuan Fei
- Feng Liu
Institutions
- Nanjing Tech University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- ChemNanoMat
- Published
- 2026-02-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/cnma.202500435
- Primary Topic
- Graphene research and applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00