Optical properties of graphite oxide and reduced graphite oxide

We studied the optical properties of a graphite oxide and a reduced graphite oxide by using the optical spectroscopic technique. The graphite oxide does not show a finite dc conductivity and has several characteristic absorption modes in the mid-infrared region, caused by an epoxide functional group and hydroxyl and carboxyl moieties in the mid-infrared range. The reduced graphite oxide shows a Drude-like response in the far-infrared region and the estimated dc conductivity and electric mobility are around 200Ω^-1cm ^-1 and ∼100cm²V^-1s^-1, respectively. We found that the optical conductivity cannot be fitted with a simple Drude model, which indicates that the charge carriers are correlated. We applied an extended Drude model and obtained the optical scattering rate and the optical effective mass. We found that the optical effective mass can carry information of both the enhanced mass by correlation and the electronic band structure.