KCS

Recently semiconductor/reduced graphene oxide (rGO) composites have been used for the reduction of carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels like methanol, ethanol, etc. The intimate contact between semiconductor and rGO is proposed to accelerate the transfer of electrons from semiconductor to rGO. This leads to decrease charge recombination and enhance the carbon dioxide conversion efficiency. In this work, highly thin reduced graphene oxide sheet will be synthesized to prevent thick rGO sheet from concealing carbon dioxide reduction sites on the surface of semiconductor as well as maintain the high conductivity. After graphene oxide (GO) will be synthesized by modified Hummers method, GO spin-coated film will be reduced by electrochemical method of Rodney S. Ruoff’s group. According to their research, in PMMA/GO/metal composite cathode, electron transfer from metal to GO and proton ions of aqueous solution occurs and each of them are reduced to rGO and hydrogen gas. The hydrogen gas effectively delaminates rGO sheet producing thin rGO sheet. This would increase the charge separation and the conversion efficiency of carbon dioxide to hydrocarbon fuels.