Thermally reduced pillared GO with precisely defined slit pore size
Journal article, 2020

Graphene oxide (GO) pillared with tetrakis(4-aminophenyl)methane (TKAM) molecules shows a narrow distribution of pore size, relatively high specific surface area, but it is hydrophilic and electrically not conductive. Analysis of XRD, N-2 sorption, XPS, TGA and FTIR data proved that the pillared structure and relatively high surface area (similar to 350 m(2) g(-1)) are preserved even after thermal reduction of GO pillared with TKAM molecules. Unlike many other organic pillaring molecules, TKAM is stable at temperatures above the point of GO thermal reduction, as demonstrated by TGA. Therefore, gentle annealing results in the formation of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) pillared with TKAM molecules. The TKAM pillared reduced graphene oxide (PrGO/TKAM) is less hydrophilic as found using dynamic vapor sorption (DVS) and more electrically conductive compared to pillared GO, but preserves an increased interlayer-distance of about 12 angstrom (compared to similar to 7.5 angstrom in pristine GO). Thus we provide one of the first examples of porous rGO pillared with organic molecules and well-defined size of hydrophobic slit pores. Analysis of pore size distribution using nitrogen sorption isotherms demonstrates a single peak for pore size of similar to 7 angstrom, which makes PrGO/TKAM rather promising for membrane and molecular sieve applications.

Author

Andreas Nordenstrom

Umeå University

Artem Iakunkov

Umeå University

Jinhua Sun

Chalmers, Industrial and Materials Science, Materials and manufacture

Alexandr V. V. Talyzin

Umeå University

RSC Advances

20462069 (eISSN)

Vol. 10 12 6831-6839

Subject Categories

Inorganic Chemistry

Physical Chemistry

Materials Chemistry

DOI

10.1039/d0ra00067a

More information

Latest update

8/17/2020