A General Strategy For Vanadate And Graphene Oxide Composited Nanoribbons Synthesis

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) have attracted considerable attention for their potentialapplications in nanoscale electronic devices due to the tunable electronic state. It hasbeen reported that narrow and straight-edged strips of graphene could graduallytransform from semimetals to semiconductors as their width decreases. To obtainGNRs with controlled electronic state, a number of attempts have been explored, asrepresented by lithographic, bulgy and synthetic methods as well as through theunzipping of carbon nanotubes. Hydrothermal method has recently been employed tochop graphene oxide (GO) to graphene oxide quantum dots. However, controlledlengthwise cleaving of GO for making of graphene oxide nanoribbons (GONRs) hashitherto been reported. Here, we show for the first time that GONRs can be producedby controlled unzipping of GO under hydrothermal conditions using m-LaVO4asprofiling agent. As an additional benefit, the potential of this easy and reproducibleapproach is explored for the generation of graphene oxide and m-LaVO4compositednanoribbons (GONRs@m-LaVO4) as a catalyst for the oxidation of cyclohexane.