Hello, I bought Graphite flakes, 99% carbon basis, -325 mesh particle size (≥99%), natural. I want to do shear mixing exfoliation via water and pluronic with graphite.
My question is: should i wash it with solvent before making this lab experiment?
Another question, if I want to do TGA characterization for pristine graphite, should I wash it with solvent and dry it in vaccum oven? Thank you.
Graphite could have some minor impurities which you can demonstrate with Raman spectroscopy, TGA, XPS, etc.
Washing with solvents would not make any significant difference since the impurities are more likely to be covalently bonded to the graphite (e.g. hydroxyl groups).
Eliminating these impurities would require thermal treatment (temperatures >700oC).
Otherwise, treatment at ~150 oC would be beneficial for water removal.
No, you need not wash it. 99% C is already very high. Graphite always has defect sites consisting of active carbon atoms. These atoms easily capture oxygen from environment to form many types of carbon/oxygen groups. There could be 12 types of such groups. Even if you eliminate these groups at high temperature (>700 oC) under inert gas, these groups are formed again whenever graphite is exposed to oxygen environment such as air, water, steam. I did thorough experiment on it, you may take a look of this article (https://www.hindawi.com/journals/je/2013/638576/abs/). I have not found oxygen-free graphite/graphene under ambient environment because there are always C atoms on defects and edges, no matter how crystalline the graphite/graphene is. Typically impurities such as metal and amorphous carbon can be removed by acid (example, nitric acid with reflux or soniation). Cannot figure out any organic solvent can help you to wash graphite.
Dear Hassan,
It will depend if you deal with natural or synthetic graphite.
In a broad sense, natural graphite is more suitable to have impurities inter layers, very dependent of the geo formation ambient.
Nevertheless, it only make any sense if you work with untreated natural graphite in a flake shape. If you already have it size reduced, you will lost near all material trying to wash them. I already found SiO2 inclusions on natural graphite, as well as graphite-NO3 compound, due to the gas equilibrium with ambient.
I suggest to run a PXRD or EDS prior to decide if is worth or not wash.
In general when necessary, a magnetic stirrer will do a nice job, since major impurities are macro in graphic flake layers.
Best regards
WNM
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