1. difference of the properties between GO and rGO.... many but primary is conductivity.

2. I just put GO in the furnace under 400 C, can it be easily reduced to rGO? at 400C, GO will be only partially reduced.. higher temperatures are preferable. Search "thermal reduction of graphene oxide" in google scholar, you can get more info.

3. Regarding catalytic activity, it depends on what type of catalyst you are looking for. GO is acid catalyst, but there are some papers which says GO as "carbo catalysts" which is technically not true.

The difference between GO and rGO is the presence of more hydroxyl, carboxyl, and ether functional groups on the surface of GO sheets, which can be effective in interacting with other compounds or dispersing in water.

The catalytic properties of these compounds depend on the reaction studied and the functional groups present in the reactants and products.

Reading the following article may be helpful.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1067

Hii,

1. Graphene oxide is the oxidized product of graphite (which u can synthesize by following Improved hummer's method) and we are oxidizing the graphite in order to decrease the number of layers of graphite by using strong oxidats such as H2SO4/H3PO4 and heat.The reduced graphene oxide (rGO) is the removal of oxygen moieties from the graphene oxide in order to get the properties nearly to that of graphene which you cannot obtain from graphite.

2. It is better to reduce GO to rGO by chemical method in order to get good properties (as many reports are suggesting).

3. Regarding the catalytic application, it depends which one is suitable whether GO or rGO. Alone GO/rGO may not show good property you have to make some binary or ternary composite by using GO/rGO in order to improve the catalytic performance.

All the best.

Sridhar Vadahanambi Thank you so much!

Mahdi Ghorbani Meenaketan Sethi Thank you all for the answers!

As is obvious from the name.. the chief difference between GO and rGO is the number od oxygen rich groups present of graphene structure. GO is obtained by chemical exfoliation of graphite of which most commonly used is improved hummers method.

To obtain rGO, GO is reduced by chiefly two methods,

1. Chemical Reduction (Using reducing agents like sodium borohydride).

2. Thermal Reduction wherein GO is heated over 400 ⁰C.

It should be noted that different reduction techniques lead to different edge effect in the obtained rGO which will have major effects on the its properties.

Additionally, GO is electrically insulating whereas rGO is conductive. Hence there use also differs. Where GO is good to be used as substrate for catalysis owing to rich functionality where chemical moieties over the surface of GO can be chemically altered, rGO are more suited for applications like supercapacitors and batteries due to its better electron transport property. Usually rGO would have higher surface area as well which is due to the removal of intercalating oxygen groups during chemical or thermal reduction.

I am hopeful that this answer your question.

Praveen Mishra Thank you so much for your answer. It's really helpful. What I am planning to do is applying GO as the substrate for my catalyst, to have CO2 hydrogenation to DME reaction.

Xiao Fan Wonderful. Best of Luck.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0e62/7dda0ec9e7ba9205b553e37d63178efbe217.pdf

Solomon Joseph Thank you so much!

Xiao Fan you are welcomed