Swollen Structures of Brodie Graphite Oxide as Solid Solvates

Journal article, 2020

Swelling of Brodie graphite oxide (B-GO) was studied for a series of normal alcohols from methanol to 1-nonanol. Isopiestic, X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric, and differential scanning calorimetry data demonstrated that sorption of polar liquids into GO lamellas formed the set of regular swollen structures, simple binary "solid solvates", characterized by the distance between the GO planes and the value of sorption. Temperature-composition behavior of the swollen structures was adequately described by conventional binary phase diagrams. Phase transformation of the low-temperature swollen structure of B-GO with 1-nonanol gave a clear example of incongruent melting transition typical for the binary solvates. A discreet set of the interplane distances observed by XRD and the stepwise equilibrium desorption pointed to the layered arrangement of solvent molecules in the swollen structures. The swollen structures with one to five parallel layers were observed for a series of normal alcohols with B-GO. The average volume of one layer, 0.36 +/- 0.06 cm(3) g(-1) B-GO, was almost the same for rather different organic liquids and was possibly restricted by the internal geometry of B-GO. This internal volume available for the sorption of the first layer was reasonably estimated from geometrical parameters of B-GO.