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Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) as a powerful analytical tool has gained extensive attention. Despite of many efforts in the design of SERS substrates, it remains a grand challenge for creating a general substrate that can detect diverse target analytes. Herein, we report our attempt to address this issue by constructing a novel metal-graphene oxide nanostructured film as SERS substrate. Taking advantages of the high affinity of graphene oxide (GO) toward aromatic molecules and the SERS property of nanostructured metal, this structure exhibits great potential for diverse aromatic molecules sensing, which is demonstrated by using crystal violet (CV) with positive charge, amaranth with negative charge, and neutral phosphorus triphenyl (PPh(3)) as model molecules.

As a single-atom-thick carbon material with high surface area and conductivity, graphene provides an ideal platform for designing composite nanomaterials for high-performance electrocatalytic or electrochemical devices. Herein, we demonstrated a facile strategy for controllably growing high-quality Prussian blue nanocubes on the surface of reduced graphene oxide (PBNCs/rGO), which represents a new type of graphene/transition metal complex heterostructure. The merit of this method is that the composite nanomaterials could be produced directly from GO in an in situ wet-chemical reaction, where the reduction of GO and the deposition of PBNCs occurred simultaneously. The obtained composite nanomaterials were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Raman spectroscopy, and electrochemical techniques. It was found that uniform PBNCs with controlled size and good dispersion were directly grown on the surface of graphene nanosheets. Moreover, we also investigated the performance of PBNCs/rGO nanocomposites as amperometric sensor toward reduction of H(2)O(2). Such a sensor showed a rapid and highly sensitive response to H(2)O(2) with a low detection limit (45 nM), which might find promising applications in developing a new type of enzymeless biosensor.

This report describes the preparation of Pt-nanoparticle-coated gold-nanoporous film (PGNF) on a gold substrate via a simple "green" approach. The gold electrode that has been anodized under a high potential of 5 V is reduced by freshly prepared ascorbic acid (AA) solution to obtain gold nanoporous film electrode. Then the Pt nanoparticle is grown on the electrode by cyclic voltammetry (CV). The resulting PGNF electrode has highly ordered arrangement and large surface area, as verified by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and CV, suggesting that the nanoporous gold film electrode provides a good matrix for obtaining PGNF with high surface area. Furthermore, the as-prepared PGNF electrode exhibited high electrocatalytic activity toward methanol oxidation in a 0.5 M H 2SO 4 solution containing 1.5 M methanol. The present novel strategy is expected to reduce the cost of the Pt catalyst remarkably.