Upgrading coal to multifunctional graphene-based materials by direct laser scribing

Despite much progress, developing a cost-effective and environmental-friendly method to upgrade earth-abundant coal into high value-added products is still a grand challenge. Here, we report a one-step and facile approach to synthesize graphene based materials from coal under ambient conditions via direct CO2 laser scribing. The obtained laser scribed graphene from coal (C-LSG) has been well characterized, showing good electrical conductivity (12 Omega/square), high electrochemical sensitivity and ionic storage properties. These properties make C-LSG a multifunctional material for applications in Joule heating, electrochemical dopamine sensing, and supercapacitors. Moreover, when electrochemically deposited with FeNi hydroxide, the hybridized FeNi/C-LSG shows impressive electrocatalysis performance toward oxygen evolution reaction. As such, this direct laser scribing of coal into graphene based materials can not only potentially expands new business opportunities by adding coal into the valuechain of industries that usually do not use coal as the starting materials in their manufacturing processes but also brings down the cost of the graphene based materials, which would make their deployment in various field more economically attractive. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.