Design and synthesis of imino alcohol decorated graphene oxide nanosheets as an electrode material for sensor applications

Abstract

Among all the two-dimensional carbon-based nanomaterials, Graphene oxide (GO) has been extensively explored for the covalently conjugation on their surface. In this work, we report the covalent functionalization of diethanolamine on the GO basal planes and thereby the enhancement of interlayer d-spacing from 9.4 Å to 11.2 Å was observed. No significant peak was observed for the formation of reduced graphene oxide and their corresponding 2D peaks, which confirms the intercalation leads to the decoration of enriched oxygen atoms on the surface of GO. The functionalization was performed on the surface through the epoxide ring-opening and thereby leads to the formation alcoholamine moieties. The covalent intercalation was confirmed by XRD, FT-IR, XPS and the surface morphology was analyzed by SEM, and AFM Images. The calculated number of layers were in good agreement in both theoretical and experimental results. As the intercalated GO nanosheets result with iminoalcohol moieties on the basal plane, it could be used for the sensing of metals in the biological fluids.