Experimental investigation of the effects of different liquid environments on the graphene oxide produced by laser ablation method

In this work, the effects of liquid environments on the characteristics and optical properties of carbon nanostructures - in particular, Graphene Oxide (GO) - prepared by pulsed laser ablation were studied experimentally. The second harmonic beam of a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser of 532 nm wavelength at 6 ns pulse width and 0.7 J/cm2 fluence was employed to irradiate the graphite target in liquid nitrogen, deionized water, and 0.01 M CTAB solution under the same initial experimental conditions. Produced nanostructures were characterized by Raman scattering spectrum, FE-SEM and TEM images, Photoluminescence, and UV-Vis-NIR spectrum. TEM and FE-SEM images show sheet-like morphology with few square micrometer area graphenes in all samples. Raman and UV-Vis-NIR analyses show that graphene is oxidized due to the presence of oxygen molecules in ablation environment. Results demonstrate that the graphene nanosheets produced in deionized water are multilayer, contains the largest sp2 domain size, the least defects and the lowest possibility of aggregation.