Controlling the assembly of graphene oxide by an electrolyte-assisted approach

In this work, we studied the effects of salts on the self-assembly of two-dimensional graphene oxide (GO) driven by the dissolution of a sub-microliter droplet. Two kinds of structures were obtained. One was a GO snowball with small salt crystals inserted between sheets, which formed with a low initial concentration of insoluble salt in the GO dispersion. The other was a hybrid nanostructure containing NaCl or KCl crystals on a GO snowball, which formed with a high initial salt concentration in the suspension. In addition, we report the novel nanodent-decorated GO snowballs formed by templating the spontaneously formed microdroplets through ouzo effects. Such highly crumpled snowball structures may find applications in super-capacitors or catalyst supports.