Efficient reduction and exfoliation of graphite oxide by sequential chemical reduction and microwave irradiation

•We develop a rapid and cost-effective microwave irradiation method to prepare RGO.•Combining chemical method and microwave irradiation achieves superior GO reduction.•We investigate mechanism of microwave reaction and its impact on GO reduction. An efficient hybrid method combining chemical reduction and microwave irradiation is used to reduce graphite oxide. The hybrid reduction method achieved a carbon/oxygen ratio of 10.33 which is 2.7 times and 1.4 times higher than those obtained with chemical solution and solid-phase microwave irradiation only methods, respectively. The reduced graphene oxide obtained by the hybrid method had a conductance (1.19×104S/m) 84.2 times higher than that by chemical solution and 15.6 times higher than that by solid-phase microwave irradiation. In addition, we reveal that microwave irradiation removes CO bonds more efficiently than CO bonds.