Gadolinium Nitrate Decorated Reduced Graphene Oxide Structure and Morphological Studies for Battery Applications

In-situ chemical and thermal reduction method was followed to prepare reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and gadolinium nitrate doped rGO (rGO/GdN) for XRD, FTIR, Raman, SEM, HR-TEM, and AFM investigations. From XRD, rGO/GdN composite was in nano crystalline structure with diffraction peaks 19.38o, 22.49o, and 31.59o correspond to (101), (201), and (111) planes. FTIR spectrum shown oxygen containing functional groups with vibrational bands of hydroxyl (-OH), carbonyl (C-O), epoxy (O-C-O) group, and a strong peak represents stretching vibration of Gd-O. Raman spectra provides appearance of D, G, and 2D bands at 1323, 1572, and 2662 cm-1 respectively. Moreover, an additional band at 1607 cm-1 revealed in rGO/GdN represents the existence of nitrogen. Crystal d-spacing from HRTEM of rGO is found to be 0.344 nm for (002) plane and for Gd was 0.283 nm for (400) plane. Morphology indicated that GdN with particles are well anchored on rGO sheets. Furthermore, AFM studies for thickness of rGO/GdN was estimated as 32 nm with Average Roughness and Root Mean Square are 15.19 and 23.16 nm respectively. Hence, rGO/GdN nanocomposite has prospective applications for battery owing to their smaller crystallite sizes.