Synthesis and reduction of graphene oxide and studying the impact of synthesis method and reduction on graphene/P3HT nanocomposite properties

Graphene oxide was synthesized with three different methods, and for the conduction restoration, hydrazine hydrate and sodium borohydride were used. For the preparation of graphene oxide, Hummers, modified Hummers and improved Hummers method were implied. After reduction, the distance between graphene sheets decreased but the distance between defects areas were increased, which was confirmed by Raman spectroscopy. The distance of defect areas cause the increase of conductivity due to the extended area of basal plane. Nanocomposite of P3HT/graphene was prepared and the reduction was also implied on the nanocomposite to further study the impact of reduction on the conductivity. In this regard different analysis like FT-IR, UV-Visible, XRD and SEM were used to further study the impact of small changes on the structural properties of graphene. The results show that hydrazine hydrate is a stronger reducing agent and the close structural of the nanocomposite can facilitate electron transportation. The prepared nanocomposite can be used as active layer in solar cell applications as electron donor and acceptor