Date of Award

1-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

College/School

College of Science and Mathematics

Department/Program

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Shifeng Hou

Committee Member

Mark Whitener

Committee Member

Hans Schelvis

Abstract

Graphene, unlike other carbon allotropes has recently been the subject of interest in the field of nano material research. Graphene is being utilized as the building block for graphitic materials such as the 0-D fullerenes, 1-D nanotubes and 3-D graphites. Graphene is a single layer material, made up of interconnected hexagons of sp bonded carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb crystal lattice. Graphene and its derivatives have been shown in previous studies/research to exhibit exceptional high electronic and thermal conductivity, optical transparency and high specific surface area additional to outstanding mechanical flexibility and environmental stability. Graphene is amongst the most studied nanomaterial to date and modifications are being made to the shape, physical properties and composition. Graphene has demonstrated some applications to biosensors for health monitoring, energy storage devices, solar cells, micro actuators used in biologically inspired designs such as DNA sequencing. A number of synthesis methods have been used to produce graphene. These including mechanical exfoliation, liquid- phase exfoliation, reduction of graphene oxide, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), surface segregation and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). These techniques differ in various respects and produce graphene of different qualities. Discovery of graphene has also attracted the interest of graphene-like materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), transition metal oxides (TMOs) and other 2D compounds such as boron nitride (BN). The purpose of this research is to synthesize and characterize reduced graphene oxide derivatives of molybdenum disulfide and their properties that will lead us to potential applications as the Reduced Graphene Oxide (RGO) synthesized have active sites on the surface that can be modified chemically. Techniques employed are scanning electron microscopy imaging (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FT-IR), UV-vis spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and electrochemical characterization.

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