Graphene/Carbon Dot Hybrid Thin Films Prepared by a Modified Langmuir-Schaefer Method

Kouloumpis, A and Thomou, E and Chalmpes, N and Dimos, K and Spyrou, K and Bourlinos, AB and Koutselas, I and Gournis, D and Rudolf, P (2017) Graphene/Carbon Dot Hybrid Thin Films Prepared by a Modified Langmuir-Schaefer Method. ACS Omega, 2. pp. 2090-2099.

Abstract

The special electronic, optical, thermal, and mechanical properties of graphene resulting from its 2D nature, as well as the ease of functionalizing it through a simple acid treatment, make graphene an ideal building block for the development of new hybrid nanostructures with well-defined dimensions and behavior. Such hybrids have great potential as active materials in applications such as gas storage, gas/liquid separation, photocatalysis, bioimaging, optoelectronics, and nanosensing. In this study, luminescent carbon dots (C-dots) were sandwiched between oxidized graphene sheets to form novel hybrid multilayer films. Our thin-film preparation approach combines self-Assembly with the Langmuir-Schaefer deposition and uses graphene oxide nanosheets as template for grafting C-dots in a bidimensional array. Repeating the cycle results in a facile and low-cost layer-by-layer procedure for the formation of highly ordered hybrid multilayers, which were characterized by photoluminescence, UV-visible, X-ray photoelectron, and Raman spectroscopies, as well as X-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy.