Synthesis, Characterization and Applications of Graphene/Graphene Derivatives Based Nanostructures

 Versatile and high-performance 2-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials have emerged as a special class of materials which have not only shown immense potential for several interdisciplinary applications, but have also led to many breakthrough theories in fundamental science as well1,2. However, its applicability cannot be effectively realised unless facile techniques to synthesize bulk amount of high quality layered materials in a cost effective way. Thus, after the discovery of graphene in 20043, several graphene derivatives including the 2D graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (RGO), 0D graphene quantum dots (GQD), 1D graphene nanoribbons (GNR) and 3D graphene hydrogel (GH) have been extensively studied4. Here, I will discuss in detail the synthesis of these materials along with its structural and spectroscopic characterization results. Further, different metal/ metal oxide nanostructures (Au, SiO2 and TiO2) have been incorporated on above layered materials to tune their properties required for the particular studies and specified applications. The as synthesized nanomaterial and composites were investigated for their potential applications in electrochemical biosensing (cholesterol and urea sensing), visible light photo catalysis and in surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) studies5–8. Details of these studies and the elaborate results will be presented. 

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