Fabrication of Graphene/Conducting Polymer Nanohybrid Materials and Their Sensor Applications

Abstract

Graphene/conducting polymer (CP) nanohybrid materials have attracted considerable attention, due to their synergetic effects, including enhanced surface area, charge carrier mobility, thermal/electrical conductivity, and chemical/mechanical stability. To synthesize the graphene/CP nanohybrid materials for using in electronic device applications, covalent and non-covalent synthetic methods have been introduced. Contrary to non-covalent method, covalent functionalization requires time-consuming and harsh conditions, because it needs firstly to introduce functional group on the surface of graphene and CPs. On the other hand, non-covalent functionalization offers facile way to obtain graphene/CP nanohbyrid materials through secondary bonding interactions, such as π–π interactions. In-situ synthetic method, as one of the non-covalent synthetic method, is very promising and powerful tool to design graphene/CP nanohybrids owing to getting uniform nanohbyrid materials. Furthermore, the morphology and shape of the graphene/CP nanohybrids can be controlled by selectively designing the morphology of starting materials (graphene or CP materials). In this study, various graphene/CP nanohbyrid materials are introduced by using in-situ synthetic method. The synthesized nanohybrid materials exhibit excellent electrical/chemical properties, enabling to be applied in sensor applications. Synergetic effects of graphene/CP nanohbyrid mateirals provide rapid response/recovery time, when using as a transducer in the sensing device. Furthermore, the enlarged surface area from graphene/CP nanohybrids can provide the improved interactions with target analytes, leading to the ultrasensitive sensing performance.