Hydrogenation of Graphene by Reaction at High Pressure and High Temperature

The chemical reaction between hydrogen and purely sp2-bonded graphene to form graphene’s purely sp3-bonded analogue, graphane, potentially allows the synthesis of a much wider variety of novel two-dimensional materials by opening a pathway to the application of conventional chemistry methods in graphene. Graphene is currently hydrogenated by exposure to atomic hydrogen in a vacuum, but these methods have not yielded a complete conversion of graphene to graphane, even with graphene exposed to hydrogen on both sides of the lattice. By heating graphene in molecular hydrogen under compression to modest high pressure in a diamond anvil cell (2.6–5.0 GPa), we are able to react graphene with hydrogen and propose a method whereby fully hydrogenated graphane may be synthesized for the first time.