Large-scale production of high-quality graphene using glucose and ferric chloride

Graphene and its derivatives have great potential for a variety of applications. The large-scale production of high-quality graphene using simple methods with cheap feedstocks is crucial for its wide applications. Glucose is an abundant and renewable carbon resource and FeCl3 is a very cheap salt. Herein, we proposed a new method to prepare graphene that is simply composed of the dissolution of glucose and FeCl3 in water, vaporization of water, and calcination. It was found that graphene with up to a few layers could be prepared and its electrical conductivity was similar to that of the graphene sheets synthesized using the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. Further studies indicated that FeCl3 was the key to the generation of high-quality graphene, because it acted as both the template and catalyst, for the formation of graphene.