Chen Qiang, Kim Jewook, Choi Myungwoo, Jeon Seokwoo
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea.
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, 02841, Republic of Korea.
Nano Converg. 2025 Jun 27;12(1):30. doi: 10.1186/s40580-025-00498-x.
Integrating carbon nanomaterials into solar energy technologies has emerged as a promising strategy to improve efficiency, scalability, and sustainability. Although graphene has excellent carrier mobility, electrical conductivity, and optical transparency, graphene derivatives such as graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) suffer from significant structural defects and disruption of the sp-hybridized carbon lattice caused by oxidative processing, severely limiting their electronic and optoelectronic performances. To address these limitations, minimally oxidized graphene (MOG), which includes non-oxidized graphene flakes (NOGFs) and low-oxidized graphene quantum dots (GQDs), has been developed via a nondestructive approach based on ion or molecular intercalation followed by liquid-phase exfoliation. These materials retain the integrity of a π-conjugated network and offer tunable functionalities and solution processability. NOGFs exhibit high conductivity, broadband light absorption, and thermal stability, making them ideal materials for use in solar cell electrodes, photothermal absorbers, and photocatalytic scaffolds. GQDs with tunable bandgaps and abundant functional groups serve as interfacial modifiers in solar cells and as active sites for photocatalysis. This review summarizes recent advances in MOG, focusing on structure-property-performance relationships and applications in solar energy conversion. A comparative evaluation with conventional GO/rGO-based systems is presented along with future directions toward developing high-efficiency graphene-enabled solar technologies.
将碳纳米材料整合到太阳能技术中已成为提高效率、可扩展性和可持续性的一种有前景的策略。尽管石墨烯具有优异的载流子迁移率、电导率和光学透明度，但氧化石墨烯（GO）和还原氧化石墨烯（rGO）等石墨烯衍生物存在显著的结构缺陷，并且氧化处理会破坏sp杂化碳晶格，严重限制了它们的电子和光电性能。为了解决这些限制，通过基于离子或分子插层随后进行液相剥离的无损方法开发了最小氧化石墨烯（MOG），它包括未氧化的石墨烯薄片（NOGFs）和低氧化的石墨烯量子点（GQDs）。这些材料保留了π共轭网络的完整性，并提供了可调功能和溶液可加工性。NOGFs具有高导电性、宽带光吸收和热稳定性，使其成为用于太阳能电池电极、光热吸收器和光催化支架的理想材料。具有可调带隙和丰富官能团的GQDs可作为太阳能电池中的界面改性剂和光催化的活性位点。本文综述了MOG的最新进展，重点关注结构-性能-性能关系以及在太阳能转换中的应用。同时还对基于传统GO/rGO的系统进行了比较评估，并给出了开发高效石墨烯基太阳能技术的未来方向。
