Joining Caffeic Acid and Hydrothermal Treatment to Produce Environmentally Benign Highly Reduced Graphene Oxide

resumo

Reduced graphene oxide (rGO) is a promising graphene-based material, with transversal applicability to a wide range of technological fields. Nevertheless, the common use of efficient-but hazardous to environment and toxic-reducing agents prevents its application in biological and other fields. Consequently, the development of green reducing strategies is a requirement to overcome this issue. Herein, a green, simple, and cost-effective one-step reduction methodology is presented. Graphene oxide (GO) was hydrothermally reduced in the presence of caffeic acid (CA), a natural occurring phenolic compound. The improvement of the hydrothermal reduction through the presence of CA is confirmed by XRD, Raman, XPS and TGA analysis. Moreover, CA polymerizes under hydrothermal conditions with the formation of spherical and non-spherical carbon particles, which can be useful for further rGO functionalization. FTIR and XPS confirm the oxygen removal in the reduced samples. The high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy (HRSTEM) images also support the reduction, showing rGO samples with an ordered graphitic layered structure. The promising rGO synthesized by this eco-friendly methodology can be explored for many applications.

categoria

Chemistry, Multidisciplinary; Nanoscience & Nanotechnology; Materials Science, Multidisciplinary; Physics, Applied

autores

Barra, A; Lazar, O; Pantazi, A; Hortiguela, MJ; Otero-Irurueta, G; Enachescu, M; Ruiz-Hitzky, E; Nunes, C; Ferreira, P

Grupos

G2 - Materiais Fotónicos, Eletrónicos e Magnéticos
G4 - Materiais Renováveis e Economia Circular

Projectos

CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials (UIDB/50011/2020)

CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials (UIDP/50011/2020)

Projeto de Investigação Exploratória: Paula Ferreira (IF_Paula Ferreira)

agradecimentos

This work was developed within the scope of the project: CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials, (FCT Ref. UIDB/50011/2020 & UIDP/50011/2020 financed by national funds through the FCT/MEC and when appropriate co-financed by FEDER under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement. The project M-ERA-NET2/0021/2016-BIOFOODPACK-Biocomposite Packaging for Active Preservation of Food is acknowledged for funding. P.F. and A.B. thank FCT for the grants IF/00300/2015 and SFRH/BD/148856/2019, respectively. C.N. is funded by national funds (OE), through FCT-Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the scope of the framework contract foreseen in the numbers 4, 5 and 6 of the article 23, of the Decree-Law 57/2016, of 29 August, changed by Law 57/2017, of 19 July. E.R.-H. acknowledges financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI, Spain) and FEDER (EU) funds (projects: MAT2015-71117-R and PID2019-105479RB-I00). This research was partially supported by COST action 15107 (STSM Reference code: 38973). This work is also sustained by the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research through the following ECSEL-H2020 Projects: PIn3S-Contract no. 10/1.1.3H/03.04.2020, POC-SMIS code 135127 and IT2-Contract no. 11/1.1.3H/06.07.2020, POC-SMIS code 136697.