A neutron diffraction study of nano-crystalline graphite oxide

The structure of graphite oxide has been studied by neutron diffraction and is found to be nano-crystalline, the diffraction pattern being a mixture of Bragg and diffuse scattering. Three strong Bragg peaks were found in the structure factor from which the layer spacing was calculated and found to be consistent with different structural regions within the graphite oxide, specifically regions of graphitic-like flat hexagons and regions containing oxidized chain-like structures. The neutron scattering pair distribution function is compared to four previously published low energy Monte Carlo structural models of GO. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.