High-conductivity graphene nanocomposite via facile, covalent linkage of gold nanoparticles to graphene oxide

Yujie Zhang,Chunhai Fan,Qing Huang,Huan Zhang,Make Geng,Cheng Peng,Yao He

doi:10.1007/s11434-012-5333-6

Abstract

Graphene and its derivative, graphene oxide (GO) have been substantively used as the main framework for dispersing or building nanoarchitectures because of their excellent properties in electronics and catalysis. The requirement to obtain superior graphene-metal hybrid nanomaterials has led us to explore a facile way to design 4-aminobenzenethiol/1-hexanethiolate-protected gold nanoparticles (aAuNPs)-functionalized graphene oxide composite (aAuNPs-GO) in solution. We demonstrate that when aAuNPs with amino groups are exposed to GO, well-dispersed coverage of Au nanoparticles are mainly observed on the edge of GO sheet. In contrast, when 1-hexanethiolate-protected gold nanoparticles (hAuNPs) without amino groups are exposed to GO, hAuNPs simply aggregate on the surface of GO. This indicates that amino groups located on the surface of Au nanoparticles are an essential prerequisite for attachment of nearly monodispersed aAuNPs. The strategy described here for the fabrication of aAuNPs-GO provides a straightforward approach to develop graphene-based nanocomposites with undamaged sheets structure and good solubility and also improve the conductivity of GO sheets evidently.

Highlights

The two-dimensional graphene was the last carbon allotrope discovered in 2004 [1]
We demonstrate that when aAuNPs with amino groups are exposed to graphene oxide (GO), well-dispersed coverage of Au nanoparticles are mainly observed on the edge of GO sheet
We have succeeded in carrying out decoration of GO with aAuNPs in Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), which is illustrated in Scheme 1

Summary

Chemicals

Except for 4-aminobenzenethiol and 1-hexanethiol (>96.0%, TCI, Japan), all other reagent-grade chemicals were purchased from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd. (SCRC), China, without further purification. Except for 4-aminobenzenethiol and 1-hexanethiol (>96.0%, TCI, Japan), all other reagent-grade chemicals were purchased from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd. Milli-Q water (18.20 MΩ cm resistivity) was used in the preparation procedure of GO and monolayer protected aAuNPs. 1.2 Synthesis of aAuNPs (0.045 mmol of SHC6H4NH2 and 0.045 mmol of CH3(CH2)4CH2SH) and hAuNPs (0.09 mmol of CH3(CH2)4CH2SH). Monolayer protected AuNPs were synthesized according to our previous work [29]

Preparation of GO nanosheets

Synthesis of aAuNPs-GO and hAuNPs-GO

Characterization

Results and discussion

Conclusions