Facile preparation of reduced graphene oxide and its Al(OH)3 nanocomposites

• A simple route to synthesize RGO and RGO/Al(OH)3 is reported.
• Red Al was used as reducing agent and precursor.
• The C/O ratio of the RGO can get to 9.0.
• The conductivity of the RGO can get to 90 S/cm.

In this work, we describe, for the first time, a facile and efficient approach for selectively synthesizing reduced graphene oxide (RGO) and RGO/Al(OH)3 nanocomposites using Red Al as both the reducing agent and the precursor of Al(OH)3, which is a very powerful reducing agent frequently used in organic synthetic methodologies to convert several types of oxygen containing carbon moieties.The results revealed that the substantial oxygen functionalities on the graphene oxide (GO) were removed by Red Al, and RGO with a C/O ratio as high as 9.0 was yielded. The electrical conductivity of RGO could get to 90 S/cm, which was nearly 9 orders of magnitude higher than that of GO. This work not only provides a new reductant to effectively reduce GO, but also develops a facile route to prepare RGO/Al(OH)3 nanocomposites.