Efficient Direct Reduction of Graphene Oxide by Silicon Substrate

Graphene has been studied for various applications due to its excellent properties. Graphene film fabrication from solutions of graphene oxide (GO) have attracted considerable attention because these procedures are suitable for mass production. GO, however, is an insulator, and therefore a reduction process is required to make the GO film conductive. These reduction procedures require chemical reducing agents or high temperature annealing. Herein, we report a novel direct and simple reduction procedure of GO by silicon, which is the most widely used material in the electronics industry. In this study, we also used silicon nanosheets (SiNSs) as reducing agents for GO. The reducing effect of silicon was confirmed by various characterization methods. Furthermore, the silicon wafer was also used as a reducing template to create a reduced GO (rGO) film on a silicon substrate. By this process, a pure rGO film can be formed without the impurities that normally come from chemical reducing agents. This is an easy and environmentally friendly method to prepare large scale graphene films on Si substrates.