Controlling the Decoration of the Reduced Graphene Oxide Surface with Pyrene-Functionalized Gold Nanoparticles

We exploited a non-covalent approach based on π-stacking interactions to address the formation of hybrids between pyrene-functionalized gold nanoparticles (PyAuNPs) and reduced graphene oxide (RGO), in which the former are distributed homogeneously on the surface of the latter with a high degree of coverage. We used water soluble PyAuNPs of two different average dimensions, namely 2 and 8 nm, in which the pendant pyrene moieties were introduced within a mixed monolayer with a choline derivative. The combination with RGO originates highly insoluble materials, in which microscopy evidences a complete adhesion of the PyAuNPs onto the carbon nanomaterial layers in a highly homogeneous fashion, with no traces of free particles, confirming the high affinity between pyrene-functionalized species and conjugated carbon nanostructure surfaces.