Plasma-chemical bromination of graphitic materials and its use for subsequent functionalization and grafting of organic molecules

Plasma-chemical bromination has been shown to be well-suited for highly selective and efficient C–Br-functionalization of polyolefin surfaces and has now been applied to graphitic materials, including highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG), natural graphite, carbon nanotubes, and graphitized carbon fibres. In contrast to the radical substitution of hydrogen by bromine at hydrogen-terminated sp3-hybridized carbon, bromination of all-carbon bound sp2-hybridized carbon in graphene requires addition to aromatic double bonds. The related change of sp2 to sp3 hybridization of the carbon atoms involved helps to explain experimental results of a loss in surface planarity on brominated HOPG. Bromine concentrations of up to 50 bromine atoms per 100 C-atoms were achieved in elemental bromine vapour under low-pressure plasma conditions using low-energetic inductively coupled radio-frequency plasma excitation. The time scale of the bromination progress was found to increase with the specific surface area of the material. The results of plasma-chemical bromination are compared to that of wet-chemical electrophilic addition reactions, which achieved 28 Br per 100 C for MWCNT. The resulting C–Br bonds from plasma-chemical processing of graphitic materials were shown to be well-suited for hydroxyl functionalization and for grafting of organic molecules by nucleophilic substitution with 1,6-diaminohexane and (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane.