Reduction of Graphene Oxide by Alcohol Thermal Treatment and Its Energy Storage Performance

Abstract Graphene oxide (GO) is thermally reduced by closed alcohol thermal treatment without adding any reducing agent. The obtained sample is named as ethanol reduced GO (GE), which is characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X‐ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, photoelectron spectroscopy and nitrogen adsorption desorption testing. The results show that the operation not only removes most of the oxygen‐containing groups, but also repairs some defects to form a perfect graphene layered structure. GE has a shell‐like layer structure without obvious agglomeration. When it is assembled into electrochemical supercapacitor, GE shows a capacitance of 195 F/g with a current density of 1 A/g (organic electrolyte), which is better than that of hydrothermal‐reduced GO (140.5 F/g) at the same conditions, showing a potential application prospect in the energy storage field.