Highly conducting graphene sheets and Langmuir–Blodgett films

Abstract

Graphene is an intriguing material with properties that are distinct from those of other graphitic systems^1,2,3,4,5. The first samples of pristine graphene were obtained by ‘peeling off’^2,6 and epitaxial growth^5,7. Recently, the chemical reduction of graphite oxide was used to produce covalently functionalized single-layer graphene oxide^{8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15}. However, chemical approaches for the large-scale production of highly conducting graphene sheets remain elusive. Here, we report that the exfoliation–reintercalation–expansion of graphite can produce high-quality single-layer graphene sheets stably suspended in organic solvents. The graphene sheets exhibit high electrical conductance at room and cryogenic temperatures. Large amounts of graphene sheets in organic solvents are made into large transparent conducting films by Langmuir–Blodgett assembly in a layer-by-layer manner. The chemically derived, high-quality graphene sheets could lead to future scalable graphene devices.