Highly Integrated Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Architectures by Non-Covalent Exfoliation of Graphite and Assembly with Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles

TL;DR

This paper presents a simple, versatile method for creating hybrid 0D/2D nanostructures by non-covalent exfoliation of graphite and assembly with zinc oxide nanoparticles, promising for energy applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel non-covalent, layer-by-layer assembly technique to produce uniform hybrid graphene-zinc oxide films with high integrity.

Findings

Achieved homogeneous hybrid films with nanometric thickness.

Demonstrated effective exfoliation of graphite using perylene diimides.

Produced hybrid structures suitable for energy storage and conversion.

Abstract

Herein, we report an easy, straight forward, and versatile approach to build 0D/2D hybrid nanoparticle/graphene architectures by means of non-covalent chemistry and a modified Layer-by-Layer assembly. Three water soluble perylene diimides were employed to efficiently exfoliate pristine graphite into positively charged few- and multilayer graphene flakes. Further combination of these cationic building blocks with anionic zinc oxide nanoparticles led to the formation of tailor-made hybrid films via electrostatic and van der Waals interactions. These supramolecular hybrid nano-structures were thoroughly characterized by UV/Vis and Raman spectroscopy, AFM as well as electron microscopy, showing outstanding long-range homogeneity and high integrity in the centimetre-scale, uniform nanometric thickness between 60-100 nm and a close contact between the different building blocks. Due to their straightforward assembly. These architectures can be considered as promising candidates for numerous advanced applications especially in the field of energy storage and conversion.