The preparation and characterization of non-covalently functionalized graphene.

Recently, much work has focused on the exfoliation of graphene through a combination of oxidation and sonication procedures, followed by reduction through chemical methods. We demonstrated that the individual graphene oxide sheets can be readily reduced by using phenolphthalin as both reducing agent and stabilizer. The obtained non-covalently functionalized chemically reduced graphene oxide (CRG) can be dispersed in organic solvents very well, such as alcohol, N,N-dimethylformamide, N,N-Dimethylacetamide, N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, etc., which can give practical applications in large scale production of oil dispersible graphene and have a potential in polymer nanocomposites fabrication.