Issue 33, 2014 - Progress in the study of the structure of graphene oxide

Progress has been made in the study of the structure of graphene oxide

Recently, a research team led by Zhang Zhongping, a researcher at the Institute of Intelligence of Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that graphene oxide prepared by classical methods has a large number of π conjugated carbon radicals on its π network plane, which can directly trigger long-term visible super chemiluminescence, and its luminescence intensity exceeds that of horseradish peroxidase and hydrogen peroxide classical systems
.
The results of the study were recently published in the internationally renowned chemical journal German Applied Chemistry
.
The results of this study provide a new understanding of the structure, properties and applications of graphene oxide, which will broaden the potential application value
of graphene oxide.

Graphene oxide has been widely used in various fields as a flake peeled graphite oxidation derivative, but its chemical structure and composition are still not fully understood, and a variety of existing structural models cannot explain some of the recently reported physical and chemical behaviors
of graphene oxide.
On the basis of the early synthesis of fluorescent graphene oxide materials and their paper sensors, the researchers of the Institute of Intelligence carefully explored the synthesis reaction
of graphene oxide.
Unlike in the past, the discovery suggests that graphene oxide is not an effective chemiluminescent quenching agent
.
At the same time, researchers also found that by re-oxidizing graphene oxide after the reaction, carbon radicals can be regenerated, thereby cyclically initiating chemiluminescence
.
(Yan)