Influence of Graphene Sheets Accumulation on Optical Band Gap Enhanced Graphite Exfoliation

Abstract

Recently, graphene has been adopted to replace other expansive materials in various devices that perform numerous functionalities in many industrial fields. Meanwhile, researchers are still investigating the amazing properties of graphene. Herein, reduced graphene oxide (rGO) has been successfully exfoliated directly using a graphite rod in a modified electrolyte including a table salt as a co-electrolyte. The structure of graphene obtained by using exfoliation methods shows a low ratio of O/C and confirms the high crystallinity of rGO. The thickness of rGO was adjusted during the drying of the drops of rGO solution and obtained about an 8-80 nm rGO thick. The increased O/C ratio and crystallinity enhancement could be attributed to the quantum confinement effect. Further investigations to estimate the decay constant of the optical band gap during the thinning of the rGO layers show that the optical band gap was associated with thicknesses of the rGO at a decay constant of 0.3367±0.00205. These results would be crucial in several optical applications that depend on the thicknesses and the band gap.