Phase reversal behavior on two-dimension plane of fluorinated graphene during defluorination

Abstract The inverse engineering of structure regulation on graphene plane is underexplored and challenging task because of its fast process and complicated dynamics. Here the slow-released defluorination for fluorinated graphene (FG) was successfully achieved, and we consequently found the “phase reversal” behavior on FG plane during defluorination firstly, rather than widely considered to be an arbitrary defluorination process. Before “phase reversal”, some aromatic regions of island phase generate and fluorinated regions with leading status are continuous phase. After “phase reversal”, the further increased aromatic regions link up into a single stretch as continuous phase reversedly and decreased fluorinated regions split into island phase. For special intermediate state (FG-12h) before “phase reversal”, the excitons of confining aromatic regions easily return to ground state through the radiative recombination pathway, which achieves the strong photoluminescence emission with a quantum yield of ∼56 %. Meanwhile, the produced radicals are relatively stable on the confining aromatic regions. Finally, obtained highly fluorescent FG-12h is applied for detection of Au3+ and its detection concentration is as low as 0.024 μM. This is not attributed to the charge interactions between C–F bonds and Au3+ but also the stable radicals enabling Au3+-radical interactions. Such detection also presents a good selectivity and reversibility.