Tuning the Interlayer Distance of Graphene Oxide as a Function of the Oxidation Degree for o-Toluidine Removal

Graphene oxide (GO) with different oxidation degrees is prepared by a modified Hummers’ method varying KMnO4 amount from 0.5 to 6.0 g. X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), micro–Raman, thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray photoeelectron spectroscopy, Boehm titrations, high–resolution transmission electron microscopy, and, finally, positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) are exploited to assess the properties of GO. Results show that increasing oxidant species can tune the interlayer gap between GO sheets up to a maximum value in the case of 4.0 g KMnO4 content. Moreover, these results validate the two-component-based model of GO in which, at low oxidation degree, there are unsplit/isolated graphene planes, instead at higher oxidant amounts, a five-layer sandwiched configuration occurs comprising graphene planes having functional groups decorating the edges (bwGO), hydrated oxidative debris (OD) and “empty” spaces (revealed by PALS as the distance between (bwGO + OD) two-component layers). In addition, by XRPD analysis, the total gap between two sheets is easily computed. In order to correlate these findings to pollutant removal capability, planar o-toluidine adsorption is studied. Since this molecule diffuses in an aqueous environment, the obtained adsorption percentages are compared to the thickness of the hydrated OD grafted onto bwGO. A strict connection between the pollutant removal efficacy and the variation of the hydrated interlayer distance is found.