Graphite oxide

Graphite oxide, formerly called graphitic oxide or graphitic acid, is a compound of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen in variable ratios, obtained by treating graphite with strong oxidizers. The maximally oxidized bulk product is a yellow solid with C:O ratio between 2.1 and 2.9, that retains the layer structure of graphite but with a much larger and irregular spacing.
The bulk material disperses in basic solutions to yield monomolecular sheets, known as graphene oxide by analogy to graphene, the single-layer form of graphite. Graphene oxide sheets have been used to prepare a strong paper-like material, and have recently attracted substantial interest as a possible intermediate for the manufacture of graphene. However, this goal remained elusive until 2012 since graphene obtained by this route still has many chemical and structural defects.
Graphite oxide has attracted much interest recently as a possible route for the large-scale production and manipulation of graphene, a material with extraordinary electronic properties. Graphite oxide itself is an insulator,almost a semiconductor, with differential conductivity between 1 and 5×10−3 S/cm at a bias voltage of 10 V. However, being hydrophilic, graphite oxide disperses readily in water, breaking up into macroscopic flakes, mostly one layer thick. Chemical reduction of these flakes would yield a suspension of graphene flakes. It was argued that the first experimental observation of graphene was reported by Hanns-Peter Boehm in 1962. In this early work the existence of monolayer reduced graphene oxide flakes was demonstrated. The contribution of Boehm was recently acknowledged by Andre Geim, the Nobel Prize winner for graphene research.