The Development Trend of Graphene Derivatives

Graphene has been considered a star material since its discovery in 2004 due to its attractive properties such as high electronic conductivity, large surface area, excellent mechanical stability and good heat conducting performance. The graphene technologies and derivatives have developed rapidly in the past decade and form a huge family including graphene oxides, reduced graphene oxides, graphene foam, vertical graphene, graphene sponge and other 3D graphene architectures. The fabrication methods for graphene and derivatives evolve from mechanical exfoliation to chemical exfoliation, and further update to chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and plasma enhanced CVD (PECVD) vapor deposition. Successful commercialization of graphene oxides and reduced graphene oxides have been achieved, and impressively, they are the basic building blocks for other 3D graphene architectures. However, they suffer from relatively low electronic conductivity, restacking and many defects. Meanwhile, high-quality graphene foam and vertical graphene prepared by CVD and PECVD have emerged, but their fabrication process involves high temperature and complex techniques. It is inferred that high-end 3D graphene derivatives with few defects and high electronic conductivity are the future development direction. New facile preparation methods must be developed to assemble graphene units into desired systems or configurations.