Wet Chemical Functionalization of Graphene

The fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and graphene have enriched the family of carbon allotropes over the last few decades. Synthetic carbon allotropes (SCAs) have attracted chemists, physicists, and materials scientists because of the sheer multitude of their aesthetically pleasing structures and, more so, because of their outstanding and often unprecedented properties. They consist of fully conjugated p-electron systems and are considered topologically confined objects in zero, one, or two dimensions.Among the SCAs, graphene shows the greatest potential for high-performance applications, in the field of nanoelectronics, for example. However, significant fundamental research is still required to develop graphene chemistry. Chemical functionalization of graphene will increase its dispersibility in solvents, improve its processing into new materials, and facilitate the combination of graphene’s unprecedented properties with those of other compound classes.On the basis of our experience with fullerenes and carb...