A facile preparation of edge etching, porous and highly reactive graphene nanosheets via ozone treatment at a moderate temperature

• A facile method to modify graphene nanosheets by ozone treatment.
• The edge etching, porous and highly reactive graphene nanosheets were prepared.
• The ozone treatment time and temperature jointly affect the final results.
• The dispersion of modified graphene nanosheets was significantly improved.
• The modified graphene nanosheets can be conveniently used for further application.

A simple method to modify thermal-exfoliated graphene nanosheets (T-GNS) by using streaming ozone under different time and temperature is described in this paper. The results indicated that a wide variety of oxygen-containing groups such as COH, COC, CO and COOH could be introduced on the surface of T-GNS by ozone treatment. Especially when ozone modification was taken under 80 °C for 20 min, the atomic ratio of O/C was increased to 0.503, and the percentage of carboxyl groups was up to 14.37%, which was more than 10 times compared with the original T-GNS. In addition, it is worth mentioning that ozone treatment under a moderate temperature could cause etching on the edge of T-GNS and form porous structure in basal plane. As a result, the dispersion of ozone-treated T-GNS in aqueous solution was greatly improved, and the enhanced oxygen-containing groups and dispersion would facilitate its further functionalization and application.

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