One step electrochemical exfoliation of natural graphite flakes into graphene oxide for polybenzimidazole composite membranes giving enhanced performance in high temperature fuel cells

In this work, a 3D-printed reactor was designed to enable natural graphite flakes to be used for electrochemical exfoliation to quickly obtain graphene oxide. Graphite foil as a typical raw material of electrochemical exfoliation was also exfoliated for comparison. Under the same conditions (10 V, 1 mol L-1 ammonium sulphate solution as electrolyte), the graphene products obtained by one-step electrochemical exfoliation using natural graphite flakes based on the reactor, have a significantly higher degree of oxidation than products obtained using graphite foil (the oxygen content is increased by 50.2%). In addition, the degree of oxidation can be further increased by increasing the electrolyte concentration or reaction time. This design achieves one-step exfoliation using natural graphite flakes to obtain graphene oxide with tunable oxygen content in short time without using any strong oxidants or strong acids. The as-prepared electrochemically exfoliated graphene oxide (EGO) was used to prepare polybenzimidazole (PBI)/graphene oxide (GO) composite membranes for high-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (HTPEMFC). The 0.5%, 1% and 2% EGO loadings in the PBI membrane increased the peak power density by 13.8%, 24.4% and 29.2%, respectively.