Chemistry of Graphene Derivatives: Synthesis, Applications, and Perspectives

The chemistry of graphene and its derivatives is one of the hottest topics of current material science research. The derivatisation of graphene is based on various approaches, and to date functionalization with halogens, hydrogen, various functional groups containing oxygen, sulfur, nitrogen, phosphorus, boron, and several other elements have been reported. Most of these functionalizations are based on sp3 hybridization of carbon atoms in the graphene skeleton, which means the formation of out‐of‐plane covalent bonds. Several elements were also reported for substitutional modification of graphene, where the carbon atoms are substituted with atoms like nitrogen, boron, and several others. From tens of functional groups, for only two of them were reported full functionalization of graphene skeleton and formation of its stoichiometric counterparts, fluorographene and hydrogenated graphene. The functionalization of graphene is crucial for most of its applications including energy storage and conversion devices, electronic and optic applications, composites, and many others. The family of graphene based materials is rapidly growing since graphene rediscovery. The new graphene materials exhibit unique properties, which have not been seen in any other 2D materials. This Review covers the most important chemical modifications, which extend the graphene application in, for example, microelectronics and also summarizes the most of graphene reactions together with suggested mechanisms.