Optimized deposition of graphene oxide langmuir-blodgett thin films

Single sheet graphene (SG) is an innovative transparent material with high electrical and thermal conduction the use of which in transparent electrodes instead of traditional materials improves the performance of optoelectronic devices. In this study, graphene oxide (GO) has been obtained by a modified Hummer's method followed by an advanced technique of water removal (lyophilisation). The Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) method was applied to transfer GO from suspension to substrate. To optimize the deposition process, as suspending and spreading solvents the benzene and benzene/methanol mixtures were chosen instead of previously studied water suspensions. The number of GO layers in suspension is reduced by exfoliation in order to obtain a single GO monolayer. For this purpose, sonication and centrifugation of GO sheets are carried out. Finally, the effect of variously treated glass substrate surfaces on the deposition efficiency has been studied. In the work, it is shown that ozonization of glass substrate improves the deposition outcome, while ozonization of indium tin oxide (ITO) glass substrate is necessary to perform such deposition. The obtained GO suspensions and LB thin films have been studied using a scanning electron microscope (SEM).