Synthesis and Characterisations of Reduced Graphene Oxide Prepared by Microwave Irradiation with Sonication

Recently, reducing graphene oxide (GO) through microwave irradiation has been extensively explored in order to scale up the mass production of graphene. We report the simple technique to reduce GO by means of microwave irradiation combined with a sonication technique. The microwave-reduced GO (MWrGO) is formed by exposing a microwave onto GO powder in order to reduce the oxygen functional group and then followed by exfoliating via a sonication method. The time exposure of the microwave irradiation was 20 min with the powers of 450 W and 800 W. The UV-visible (UV-vis) spectra showed the evolution of GO into MWrGO indicated by the red shift of the absorption peak from 230 nm to 267 nm and disappearance of the shouldering peak at 300 nm. The reduction of the oxygen functional group has been proved by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra. Furthermore, the scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) data demonstrated further confirmation of the reduction of GO and the formation of basal planes of sp2 carbon clusters of the sample due to the treatment. The EDS spectra revealed that the MWrGO by 800-W-irradiation had much less oxygen functional groups and much more carbon content than GO. The proposed synthesis method is simple and readily controlled for a mass production of graphene from GO.