LAUSR

Abstract Exfoliation synthesis of graphene requires a lesser amount of wasteful chemicals and due to the hydrophobic nature, a naturally separated graphene layer is obtained with the method. In this study, three combinations of simple mechanical processes were utilized for the exfoliation synthesis of graphene sheets. The synthesized graphene sheets were characterized with TEM, SAED, SEM and EDS techniques. Based on the characterization results, the method that produced the best quality of graphene sheets was selected for further quality optimization study with alkali halide salts. Three different salts were chosen for the investigation. In the literature, there were several articles reporting improvement in flake size and the quality of the synthesized graphene sheets on account of using NaCl, sulfur, etc. Intercalation of salt particles between the layers, acting as tiny wedges to facilitate fluent exfoliation, was reported as the possible mechanism. Contrary to the popular notion of the quality improvement of the synthesized graphene sheets with such intercalation attempts, our characterization results conclusively demonstrate that the quality does not improve.