Towards the Rational Design of Graphene Oxide-based Nanocomposites for Catalytic and Sensing Applications

Abstract

The field of nanotechnology is emerging as a fundamental area for the development of new technologies. A new era of interest within the field of nanotechnology began with the identification of graphene and its analogues such as graphene oxide (GO). Graphene oxide, a functionalized graphene with oxygen-containing chemical groups, has shown great promise in various applications due to its unique properties such as high surface area, mechanical stability, and tunable optical and electrical properties. The presence of surface functional groups has opened new route for the synthesis of GO-based composite materials by coordinating with other materials (metals or metal oxides) or molecules. This in turn allows the preparation of novel materials with promising characteristics and thus, triggered intense research focused on harnessing the unique properties of these nanostructures in the last one decade. Keeping this in mind, Dash research group at NIT Rourkea focusses the design of highly active and sensitive graphene oxide based active catalyst and sensor materials by combining the unique catalytic and sensing properties of metal/metal oxide structures and graphene oxide (GO). In this presentation, various such graphene oxide based nanocomposite system will be presented and their potential use in cataytic and sensing appications will be documented.1-7