Harnessing the synergistic cooperation of silver nanowires and graphene for enhanced electrochemical detection of hydrogen peroxide

A facile one-step strategy to synthesize hybrid Ag NWs-graphene nanostructure for enhanced electrochemical detection of hydrogen peroxide was reported. The simple nature of our process leads to formation of Ag continuous and seamless integrated NWs-graphene hybrids with excellent interfacial electron transfer, avoiding the interface problems associated with the multiple-step process Interestingly, the one-step process also leads to the synergistic cooperation of graphene and Ag NWs: graphene promotes the continuous and preferential growth of long NWs by suppressing the deposition of undesirable Ag nanoparticles and short Ag NWs and facilitates the charge transfer and reactants transport by bridging the random Ag NWs, whereas Ag NWs prevents the aggregation of individual graphene sheet. By harnessing the synergy between individual constituents and their advantages, we show that the hybrid film exhibits enhanced electrochemical activity for the detection of H ₂O₂. We envision that the new nanostructured electrode with enhanced electrocatalytic activity offers great promise for new class of biosensors in environmental and biomedical applications. © 2013 IEEE.