Electrical and thermoelectric transport by variable range hopping in reduced graphene oxide

This study investigated the transport properties of single-layer reduced graphene oxides (rGOs). The rGOs were prepared by the bubble deposition method followed by thermal reduction. The crossover of the transport mechanism from Efros-Shklovskii (ES) variable range hopping (VRH) between the localized states to Mott-VRH was observed near 70 K using the temperature-dependent conductance. The ES-VRH conduction below 70 K is apparent in the electric field dependence of the field-driven hopping transport in the high-electric field regime. We also figure out that the thermoelectric power is consistent with the 2D Mott VRH above 70 K. We argue that the VRH conduction results from the topological disorders of rGO as confirmed by Raman spectroscopy. This infers that the average distance between defects is approximately 2.0 nm.