This paper reports a facile and green method for conversion of graphene oxide (GO) into graphene by low-temperature heating (80 °C) in the presence of a glass wafer. Compared to conventional GO chemical reduction methods, the presented approach is easy-scalable, operationally simple, and based on the use of a non-toxic recyclable deoxygenation agent. The efficiency of the proposed method is further expanded by the fact that it can be applied for reducing both GO suspensions and large-scale thin films formed on various substrates prior to the reduction process. The quality of the obtained reduced graphene oxide (rGO) strongly depends on the type of the used glass wafer, and, particularly, magnesium silicate glass can provide rGO with the C/O ratio of 7.4 and conductivity of up to 33000 S*cm⁻¹. Based on the data obtained, we have suggested a mechanism of the observed reduction process in terms of the hydrolysis of the glass wafer with subsequent interaction of the leached alkali and alkali earth cations and silicate anions with graphene oxide, resulting in elimination of the oxygen-containing groups from the latter one. The proposed approach can be efficiently used for low-cost bulk-quantity production of graphene and graphene-based materials for a wide field of applications.

The Globus-M spherical tokamak has demonstrated practically all of the project objectives during the 15-year period of operation. The main factor limiting further progress in plasma performance is a relatively low toroidal magnetic field. The maximum toroidal magnetic field achieved on Globus-M was 0.4 T with the exception of a limited number of shots with 0.55 T, which led to damage of the toroidal field coil in 2002. The increase of the magnetic field up to 1.0 T together with the plasma current up to 0.5 MA will result in the significant enhancement of the operating parameters in the upgraded Globus-M2 machine. The experimental program will be focused on plasma heating and non-inductive current drive and will contribute to the creation of a physical and technological base for the compact fusion neutron source development. In the article a brief overview of the physical background for the machine upgrade is outlined. The current status of the project implementation is described. First experimental results on moderate magnetic field increase from 0.4 T up to 0.5 T in the existing Globus-M machine are discussed. The improvement of plasma confinement as well as enhancement of efficiency of the beam driven current is observed.