The combination of
two-dimensional materials and metal
nanoparticles
(MNPs) allows the fabrication of novel nanocomposites with unique
physical/chemical properties exploitable in high-performance smart
devices and biosensing strategies. Current methods to obtain graphene-based
films decorated with noble MNPs are cumbersome, poorly reproducible,
and difficult to scale up. Herein, we propose a straightforward, versatile,
surfactant-free, and single-step technique to produce reduced graphene
oxide (rGO) conductive films integrating “naked” noble
MNPs. This method relies on the instantaneous laser-induced co-reduction
of graphene oxide and metal cations, resulting in highly exfoliated
rGO nanosheets embedding gold, silver, and platinum NPs. The production
procedure has been optimized, and the obtained nanomaterials are fully
characterized; the hybrid nanosheets have been easily transferred
onto lab-made screen-printed electrodes preserving their nanoarchitecture.
The Au@rGO-, Ag@rGO-, and Pt@rGO-based electrodes have been challenged
to detect caffeic acid, nitrite, and hydrogen peroxide in model solutions
and real samples. The sensors yielded quantitative responses (R
2 ≥ 0.997) with sub-micromolar limits
of detections (LODs ≤ 0.6 μM) for all the analytes, allowing
accurate quantification in samples (recoveries ≥ 90%; RSD ≤
14.8%, n = 3). This single-step protocol which requires
low cost and minimal equipment will allow the fabrication of free-standing,
MNP-embedded rGO films integrable into a variety of scalable smart
devices and biosensors.