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Aqueous Solution of Ammonium Persulfate Assisted
Electrochemical Exfoliation of Graphite into Graphene
D X He, W D Xue and R Zhao
*
Institute of Applied Electrochemistry, School of Materials And Energy,
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054,
PR China
Corresponding author and e-mail: R Zhao, ruizhao@uestc.edu.cn
Abstract. Mass production of high-quality graphene sheets is essential for their further
practical application. Here a facile electrochemical method was carried out to produce bulk of
graphene. Ammonium persulfate (APS) aqueous solution was applied as the electrolyte and
successfully exfoliated the graphite into graphene. The method here shows great promise for
the synthesis of bulk graphene with high quality.
1. Introduction
With the dramatic development of graphene producing and its applications, low-costs, high-quality
and mass production of graphene have been the major challenges and limitations for its further
development. Many excellent graphene preparation strategies have been developed respect to
different requirements and applications. Mechanical exfoliation methods came up with its first
discovery. There is a big step from adhesive tape assisted micromechanical cleavage [1] to sonication
assisted liquid-phase exfoliation [2-3]. They provide feasible means for producing graphene with low
number of defects, but still with an insufficient yield. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) emerged as
a popular method for the growth of graphene with high quality [4]. However, the costs and
production restricted its further application in industry. With bulk scale production and solution-
processable property,graphene oxide (GO) which produced by the modified Hummer’s method has
been developed as one most available method especially for synthesizing graphene-based composites
materials [5]. But the low quality (most of the graphene are few layers) and environment pollution
problem are still the key limitations.
In recent years, electrochemical exfoliation of graphene or graphene oxide have been explored as
an efficiency strategy to achieve the goal. For example, GO had been achieved with good quality and
high yield via a two-step electrochemical intercalation and oxidation approach using ammonium
sulphate and sulfuric acid as the electrolyte [6]. Furthermore, apply ammonium sulphate [7] or (2, 2,
6, 6-tetramethylpiperidin-1-yl) oxyl (TEMPO) [8] as electrolyte had also been proved to be the ideal
methods to directly produce graphene.
In this study, in the presence of aqueous ammonium persulphate (APS) solution, the
electrochemical exfoliation of graphene was successfully carried out. Few layers graphene was
produced with high quality, low-cost, environment friendly and high efficiency.
658
He, D., Xue, W. and Zhao, R.
Aqueous Solution of Ammonium Persulfate Assisted Electrochemical Exfoliation of Graphite into Graphene.
In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Materials, Chemistry and Engineering (IWMCE 2018), pages 658-662
ISBN: 978-989-758-346-9
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