Structure-dependent electrochemistry of reduced graphene oxide monolayers

While graphene and other carbonaceous nanomaterials have shown promise in a variety of electrochemical applications, measurement of their intrinsic performance is often confounded with effects related to the complexities due to diffusion in a porous medium. To by-pass this limitation, we use effectively non-porous tiled monolayers of reduced graphene oxide as a model platform to study how rates of heterogeneous electron transfer evolve as a function of graphene structure/chemistry. A variety of electrochemical systems are investigated including the standard ferri/ferrocyanide redox probe, several common biomolecular redox systems as well as copper electrodeposition. We show that the rates of heterogeneous electron transfer can vary by as much as 3 orders of magnitude depending on the reduction or annealing conditions used and the redox system investigated. Performance changes are linked to graphene chemistry, and we show that the graphene oxide reduction procedure must be chosen judiciously to maximize the electrochemical performance for particular applications.