A Simple Sonication-assisted Exfoliation and Characterization of Few Layered Graphene Nanosheets

Reduced graphene oxide (rGO) is a radical candidate for energy related sector. In this paper, we report how few layers graphene that can be produced in large quantity with low defect ratio from exfoliation of GO by using a sonication energy. GO was prepared from graphite powder by modified Hummer's method. GO then further exfoliated to graphene oxide by using ultrasonic irradiation.The ultrasonication approach for the exfoliation of rGO nanosheet is relatively fast, cost-effective and efficient as compared to other methods.The characterization techniques such as UV and FT-IR analysis confirmed the reduction of GO to rGO. The structure and morphology of as-prepared rGO nanosheet were studied using a range of techniques such as XRD, Raman spectroscopy, SEM, and TEM.The experimental results suggest that the graphene sheets obtained by this simple exfoliation method after the heat reduction had an excellent exfoliation into a few layered graphene sheets.