"One of the researchers looking into chemically modified graphene is Rodney S. Ruoff, a physical chemist and professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas, Austin. Ruoff and team members have customized the hydrophilicity of graphene oxide sheets by treating graphite oxide with organic isocyanates.

 

That procedure forms amide and carbamate ester bonds to carboxyl and hydroxyl groups on graphite oxide, thereby causing the functionalized material to form stable dispersions in polar aprotic solvents. The dispersions' stability enables the graphene oxide sheets to mix intimately with numerous organic polymers—a key step to forming composites.

 

As a result of these kinds of chemical modifications, Ruoff and coworkers prepared polystyrene-graphene and other electrically conducting polymer composites (Nature 2006, 442, 282).

 

In related work, Ruoff, Yoshitaka Ishii at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and coworkers prepared functionalized C-labeled graphite oxide and developed a method for probing the material via solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (Science 2008, 321, 1815). They propose that the method will be a powerful probe of chemical bonding networks in chemically modified graphenes."