Less defective fluorine-containing graphene with good dispersity: Preparation, characterization, and application in transparent conductive thin film

Abstract With the rapid development of science and technology on graphene, the demand for graphene grows significantly so that it is necessary to develop convenient, scalable, and low-cost methods to prepare graphene or its derivatives with high quality. Herein, a novel approach is reported for the preparation of pentafluorophenyl-functionalized graphene (PFP- f -graphene) on a considerable scale of hundreds of milligram using commercially available graphite as starting material. In this process, pentafluorophenyl-functionalized graphene was obtained via the in situ diazonium formation procedure and mild sonication treatment. The pentafluorophenyl- functionalized graphene was characterized by Raman spectroscopy, SEM, TEM, AFM, TGA, and XPS, and it was proved to be less defective. This functionalized graphene possesses good dispersity (up to 0.4 mg/mL in N , N -dimethylformamide after one week) in common organic solvents. Transparent conductive thin films with the sheet resistance as low as 47 Ω/sq were fabricated by filtering the PFP- f -graphene dispersion in DMF followed by annealing. Moreover, PFP- f -graphene can be easily modified with either hydrophilic or hydrophobic polymers.