Large-scale production of high-quality graphene using glucose and ferric chloride

Abstract

Graphene and its derivatives have great potential for a variety of applications. The large-scale production of high-quality graphene using simple methods with cheap feedstocks is crucial for its wide applications. Glucose is an abundant and renewable carbon resource and FeCl₃ is a very cheap salt. Herein, we proposed a new method to prepare graphene that is simply composed of the dissolution of glucose and FeCl₃ in water, vaporization of water, and calcination. It was found that graphene with up to a few layers could be prepared and its electrical conductivity was similar to that of the graphene sheets synthesized using the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. Further studies indicated that FeCl₃ was the key to the generation of high-quality graphene, because it acted as both the template and catalyst, for the formation of graphene.