Highly Water Dispersible Functionalized Graphene by Thermal Thiol-Ene Click Chemistry.

Materials (Basel)

School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.

Published: May 2021

AI Article Synopsis

  • Pristine graphene is challenging to disperse in water due to its hydrophobic nature and lack of reactive groups, which is a significant barrier for practical applications.
  • A new method using a thermal thiol-ene click reaction effectively functionalizes graphene with specific chemical groups (like -COO, -NH, and -S) by attaching L-cysteine ethyl ester directly to it.
  • The functionalized graphene showed improved dispersion and was characterized by changes in Raman spectroscopy, emphasizing its potential use in various applications such as inks, coatings, sensors, and supercapacitors, while also being environmentally friendly by utilizing ethanol as a solvent.

Article Abstract

Functionalization of pristine graphene to achieve high water dispersibility remains as a key obstacle owing to the high hydrophobicity and absence of reactive functional groups on the graphene surface. Herein, a green and simple modification approach to prepare highly dispersible functionalized graphene via thermal thiol-ene click reaction was successfully demonstrated on pristine graphene. Specific chemical functionalities (-COO, -NH and -S) on the thiol precursor (L-cysteine ethyl ester) were clicked directly on the sp carbon of graphene framework with grafting density of 1 unit L-cysteine per 113 carbon atoms on graphene. This functionalized graphene was confirmed with high atomic content of S (4.79 at % S) as well as the presence of C-S-C and N-H species on the L-cysteine functionalized graphene (FG-CYS). Raman spectroscopy evidently corroborated the modification of graphene to FG-CYS with an increased intensity ratio of D and G band, I/I ratio (0.3 to 0.7), full-width at half-maximum of G band, FWHM [G] (20.3 to 35.5) and FWHM [2D] (64.8 to 90.1). The use of ethanol as the reaction solvent instead of common organic solvents minimizes the chemical hazards exposure to humans and the environment. This direct attachment of multifunctional groups on the surface of pristine graphene is highly demanded for graphene ink formulations, coatings, adsorbents, sensors and supercapacitor applications.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8198566PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma14112830DOI Listing

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