Chemie des Graphens

Despite recent progress in the production of large area, high quality graphene, the technological implementation of such sheets into real world devices still requires intense future research. A major obstacle is the development of efficient chemical methods for the patterned functionalization of graphene, in order to locally define regions with a band gap, without the simultaneous introduction of defects into the carbon framework. In this respect, it can be expected that much can be learned from the further developed chemistry of carbon nanotubes as the one‐dimensional counterparts of graphene. Comparatively closer to technological applications is the use of graphene in flexible, transparent electrodes, as component of (bio‐)chemical sensors, or as reinforcing filler in composite materials. However, most of these applications require the development of optimized protocols for the conversion of graphene oxide into pristine graphene. To this end, a great challenge is not only to quantitatively remove the oxygen‐containing functional groups, but also to heal the disorder in certain areas of the sp2‐hybridized honeycomb lattice.