Owing to its unique properties, graphene has attracted tremendous attention in many research fields. There is a great space to develop graphene synthesis techniques by an efficient and environmentally friendly approach. In this paper, we report a facile method to synthesize well-dispersed multilayer graphene (MLG) without using any chemical reagents or organic solvents. This was achieved by the ozone-assisted sonication of the natural graphite in a water medium. The frequency or number of ozone treatments plays an important role for the dispersion in the process. The possible mechanism of graphene exfoliation and the introduction of functional groups have been postulated. The experimental setup is unique for ozone treatment and enables the elimination of ozone off-gas. The heat generated by the dissipation of ultrasonic waves was used as it is, and no additional heat was supplied. The graphene dispersion was stable, and no evidence of aggregation was observed---even after several months. The characterization results show that well-dispersed MLG was successfully synthesized without any significant damage to the overall structure. The graphene obtained by this method has potential applications in composite materials, conductive coatings, energy storage, and electronic devices.

In this paper, we describe the effects of helium plasma and ozone treatments on the dispersibility of carbon nanohorns (CNHs) in water. The experimental setups have been designed to efficiently generate helium plasma and ozone by dielectric barrier discharge at atmospheric pressure. After being treated with ozone, the oxygen-containing functional groups were introduced to the surface of CNHs, and are responsible for better dispersion. Helium plasma treatment was performed separately and it resulted in hydroxyl functional groups on the surface of CNHs. It was also found that the sizes of CNHs in water were smaller after ozone treatment. However, plasma-treated CNHs were bigger than ozone treated CNHs. The dispersed CNHs modified by ozone treatment were stable for more than three months without precipitation. In contrast, though helium plasma treatment introduced hydroxyl groups to the surface of CNHs, the dispersibility decreased and the flocculation of CNHs was observed in a few minutes.