Study on Phase, Molecular Bonding, and Bandgap of Reduced Graphene Oxide Prepared by Heating Coconut Shell

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to search reduced graphene oxide (RGO) phase by identifying the molecular bonding, energy band gap and phase of old coconut shell. The characterization was performed by using FTIR, Uv-Vis and XRD spectroscopy. The heating temperature used in this work was 400°C and 600°C. Furthermore, the type of heating atmosphere used in this research covers nitrogen, ambient air with and without rinsing step. The XRD analysis shows that the RGO phase is formed by turbostatic structure which is a pile of random arrangement of parallel layers that make up the graphite structure with cliftonite phase at temperature 400°C and 600°C. In the inert nitrogen gas treatment, there are two impurity phases such as potassium chlorate (KClO 4 ) and sulfur (S 11 ). The molecular bondings of C=C, C-C, C-O, C=O, C-H and O-H appeared on the FTIR spectra of the samples were indentified. Analysis by using linear regression and absorbance edge methods was conducted to result in energy gap in the range from 0.14 to 0.67 eV, indicating that the produced samples are semiconducting materials.