Graphene is a 2D-material with many useful properties such as flexibility, elasticity, and conductivity among others. Graphene could therefore become a material used in many occupational fields in the future, which can give rise to occupational exposure. Today, exposure is unknown, due to the lack of efficient measuring techniques for occupational exposure to graphene. Readily available screening techniques for air sampling and -analysis are either nonspecific or nonquantitative. Quantifying materials from the broad graphene family by an easy-to-use method is important for the large-scale industrial application of graphene, especially when for the safety of working environment. Graphene consists primarily of elemental carbon, and the present study evaluates the organic carbon/elemental carbon (OC/EC)-technique for exposure assessment. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the OC/EC analysis technique as an efficient and easy-to-use method for quantification of occupational exposure to graphene. Methods that can identify graphene would be preferable for screening, but they are time consuming and semi-quantitative and therefore not suited for quantitative work environment assessments. The OC/EC-technique is a thermal optical analysis (TOA), that quantitively determines the amount of and distinguishes between two different types of carbon, organic and elemental. The technique is standardised, well-established and among other things used for diesel exposure measurements (ref standard). OC/EC could therefore be a feasible measuring technique to quantitively determine occupational exposure to graphene. The present evaluation of the technique provides an analytical method that works quantitatively for graphene, graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide. Interestingly, the TOA technique makes it possible to distinguish between the three graphene forms used in this study. The technique was tested in an industrial setting and the outcome suggests that the technique is an efficient monitoring technique to be used in combination with characterisation techniques like for example Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy.

中文翻译：

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元素碳 - 测量石墨烯家族材料职业暴露的有效方法

石墨烯是一种二维材料，具有许多有用的特性，例如柔韧性、弹性和导电性等。因此，石墨烯未来可能成为许多职业领域使用的材料，从而引起职业暴露。如今，由于缺乏有效的石墨烯职业暴露测量技术，暴露情况尚不清楚。用于空气采样和分析的现成筛选技术要么是非特异性的，要么是非定量的。通过易于使用的方法量化广泛的石墨烯家族中的材料对于石墨烯的大规模工业应用非常重要，特别是在考虑到工作环境的安全时。石墨烯主要由元素碳组成，本研究评估了用于暴露评估的有机碳/元素碳（OC/EC）技术。这项工作的目的是评估 OC/EC 分析技术作为一种有效且易于使用的方法来量化职业接触石墨烯。能够识别石墨烯的方法更适合筛选，但它们耗时且半定量，因此不适合定量工作环境评估。OC/EC 技术是一种热光学分析 (TOA)，可定量确定两种不同类型的碳（有机碳和元素碳）的含量并区分它们。该技术是标准化的、完善的，除其他外用于柴油暴露测量（参考标准）。因此，OC/EC 可能是定量确定石墨烯职业暴露的可行测量技术。目前对该技术的评估提供了一种定量分析石墨烯、氧化石墨烯和还原氧化石墨烯的分析方法。有趣的是，TOA 技术使得区分本研究中使用的三种石墨烯形式成为可能。该技术在工业环境中进行了测试，结果表明该技术是一种有效的监测技术，可与拉曼光谱、扫描电子显微镜和原子力显微镜等表征技术结合使用。