In-situ graphene formation in a nanoporous synthetic clay mineral

In this experiment, we aim to study mechanism of formation of heteroatom doped graphene inside the confined space of layered silicate.
We use synthetic fluorohectorite clay, which are 1 nm thin negatively charged sheets kept together by interlayer cation, and we exchange cations by dyes. We
demonstrated that we can synthetize graphene in clay interlayer by pyrolyzis using different dyes, such as safranine, cyan violet etc. at very low temperatures
compared to standard process used in industry.
This heterostructure – layered silicate with heteroatom doped graphene in the interlayer is promising candidate not just for fabrication of doped graphene itself, but
also for battery applications as active components of anodes. We want to 1) study kinetics of pyrolysis to understand formation mechanism of graphene and 2)
select other potential dye candidates that will lead to formation of as large graphene flakes in the interlayer as possible.