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Aqueous-based bromination of graphene by electrophilic substitution reaction: a defect-free approach for graphene functionalization

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Abstract

A simple and effective approach for covalent bromination of reduced graphene oxide (RGO) using N-bromosuccinimide (NBS) in aqueous solution is reported. We postulate that this was achieved by using sulfuric acid to decompose NBS and facilitate the formation of bromine cations, which in turn acted as electrophilic reagents and covalently bonded to the defect sites (mostly sp2C–H) graphene sheets via electrophilic substitution reaction. The bonding situation and the content of bromine in the obtained brominated RGO (RGO-Br) were characterized using FTIR, XPS, EDS, and TGA techniques. The structure and morphology changes of the graphene sheets were also characterized by SEM, TEM, AFM, and Raman. The results show that the RGO sheets were functionalized with a high bromine content (~ 7.28 at%) and without further damaging the conjugated structure. Considering that C–Br functional groups can be further modified by a variety of organic functional groups, RGO-Br could be used as a promising intermediate in the synthesis of other functional graphene materials for various potential applications.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21474065) via the Sichuan Province Science and Technology Support Project (2017GZ0422).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Leather Chemistry and Engineering (Sichuan University), Ministry of Education, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Shuangquan Lai, Yong Jin, Xiaopeng Sun, Jiezhou Pan, Weining Du & Liangjie Shi

  2. National Engineering Laboratory for Clean Technology of Leather Manufacture, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Shuangquan Lai, Yong Jin, Xiaopeng Sun, Jiezhou Pan, Weining Du & Liangjie Shi

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  1. Shuangquan Lai
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  2. Yong Jin
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Correspondence to Yong Jin.

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Lai, S., Jin, Y., Sun, X. et al. Aqueous-based bromination of graphene by electrophilic substitution reaction: a defect-free approach for graphene functionalization. Res Chem Intermed 44, 3523–3536 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11164-018-3322-3

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