Here, the number of moles of intercalated cations was attempted to be constant by mixing appropriate amounts of salt (0.2 µmol) with GO solution (5 mL of 0.1 mg/mL). The molarity of salt was kept low to avoid Fe 3+ induced aggregation in the mixture. To evaluate the effective intercalated cations, the effluent of the X-S-GO preparation was analysed by ICP-OES for cation concentration. Our results suggest that for different cations, the percentage of intercalation may vary independent of its hydration shell. It may be noted that this experimental approach of testing the effective intercalated cations in such small quantities may not fully represent the actual mass loading. to the cross-sectional SEM analysis (Figure ). The interlayer space of the dry, original GOM is ~9.4 Å. After soaking in water for 10 mins, the interlayer space in the original GOM increases to 12.3 Å. The interlayer space is depicted via X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis as described in the methods section.