Synergistic Effect Between Tea Polyphenols and Aluminum Flake on the Reduction of Graphene Oxide.

Chemical reduction of graphene oxide (GO) using nontoxic reductants is a promising and green approach to produce graphene with versatile functionalities in large scale. However, the relatively low reduction extent of the reduced graphene oxide (RGO) is the main hindrance for many applications. In the present work, significantly enhanced reduction of aqueous RGO suspension is achieved by the chemical reduction with combination of tea polyphenols (TPs) and aluminum flake. In comparison with the RGO reduced by TPs only, the defect of the RGO achieved by the combination of TPs and aluminum flake decrease by 6.70%. The sp 2 structure fraction in the RGO increases by 9.67% due to the synergistic effect between TPs and aluminum flake. In addition, a possible mechanism for the synergistic effect between TPs and aluminum flake on the enhanced reduction of RGO is proposed. This approach provides new significant insights on the efficient and environmentally friendly preparation of RGO with much improved quality.