Reduced Graphene Oxide Thin Film on Conductive Substrates by Bipolar Electrochemistry

Recent years have shown an increased interest in developing manufacturing processes for graphene and its derivatives that consider the environmental impact and large scale cost-effectiveness. However, today’s most commonly used synthesis routes still suffer from their excessive use of harsh chemicals and/or the complexity and financial cost of the process. Furthermore, the subsequent transfer of the material onto a substrate makes the overall process even more intricate and time-consuming. Here we describe a single-step, single-cell preparation procedure of metal-supported reduced graphene oxide (rGO) using the principle of bipolar electrochemistry of graphite in deionized water. Under the effect of an electric field between two stainless steel feeder electrodes, grapheme layers at the anodic pole of the wireless graphite were oxidized into colloidal dispersion of GO, which migrated electrophoretically towards the anodic side of the cell, and deposited in the form of rGO (d((002)) = 0.395 nm) by van der Waals forces. For substrates chemically more susceptible to the high anodic voltage, we show that the electrochemical setup can be adapted by placing the latter between the wireless graphite and the stainless steel feeder anode. This method is straightforward, inexpensive, environmentally-friendly, and could be easily scaled up for high yield and large area production of rGO thin films.