Abstract Scope |
Graphene has been widely studied because of its outstanding electrical, mechanical, thermal, and optical properties. In addition, graphene has been investigated for thermoelectric characteristics. Performance of thermoelectric materials is quantified by the figure of merit (ZT), which is known to increase at low dimensional materials including graphene. Therefore, as two-dimensional material, graphene is expected to be used as thermoelectric devices. In order to produce graphene in large quantity, the chemical oxidation of graphite has been widely used for synthesizing monolayer graphene oxide (GO). However, GO loses electrical conductivity of the pristine graphene and cannot be applied for the thermoelectric applications. In this work, we investigated the thermoelectric properties of GO by reducing it with a chemical treatment. Thermopower of chemically reduced graphene oxide (rGO) was characterized according to the reduction level. This work provides a fundamental understanding of the thermoelectric properties of rGO as well as potential applications. |