Controllable Synthesis of Metal Nanoparticle/Graphene Nanoribbon Composites

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) represent a new structure of carbon nanomaterials which have exceptional physical and chemical properties, making them can be potentially used in the applications of energy, composites, biomedical and electronics [1-3]. Recently composites of metal nanoparticles (NPs) decorated on GNR surfaces has been reported as novel materials with exceptional properties and can be used for industrial applications [4, 5]. For example, Pt/GNRs and Pd/GNRs using as catalysts for fuel cells, and Ag/GNRs can be used for conductive ink or biomedical applications. Consequently, the development of synthetic method to produce metal NPs/GNR composites will lead to important advances on both fundamental study and innovative applications.

Here we report a controllable synthesis of Ag/GNR composites using a two-step reaction route. First, we synthesized and functionalized GNRs by a facile carbon nanotube chemical unzipping. The functionalization of GNRs could be tuned by controlling reaction conditions (temperature, time, and oxidant concentration), confirming by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XP)S characterizations (Fig. 1 and 2). Ag NPs can be decorated onto the GNR surface through a wet- chemical-based redox reaction. In our present experiment, we found that the particle size, morphology and distribution of Ag NPs can be further controlled by controlling the reaction conditions. Detailed materials characterizations including SEM and UV-Vis spectroscopy (Fig. 3) show that Ag/GNR composites were successfully synthesized in our experiment.

Reference

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[2] D. V. Kosynkin, A. L. Higginbotham, A. Sinitskii, J. R. Lomeda, A. Dimiev, B. K. Price, et al., "Longitudinal unzipping of carbon nanotubes to form graphene nanoribbons," Nature, vol. 458, pp. 872-6, Apr 16 2009.

[3] A. L. Higginbotham, D. V. Kosynkin, A. Sinitskii, Z. Sun, and J. M. Tour, "Lower-defect graphene oxide nanoribbons from multiwalled carbon nanotubes," ACS nano, vol. 4, pp. 2059-2069, 2010.

[4] P. T. Yin, T.-H. Kim, J.-W. Choi, and K.-B. Lee, "Prospects for graphene–nanoparticle-based hybrid sensors," Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, vol. 15, pp. 12785-12799, 2013.

[5] L. Xu, G. Yang, H. Jing, J. Wei, and Y. Han, "Ag–graphene hybrid conductive ink for writing electronics," Nanotechnology, vol. 25, p. 055201, 2014.