Covalent grafting of graphene oxide on functionalized macroporous silicon

Graphene oxide (GO) is a single-atom-thick and two-dimensional carbon material that has attracted great attention because of its remarkable electronic, mechanical, chemical and thermal properties. GO could be an ideal substrate for the development of label-free optical biosensors, however, its weak photoluminescence (PL) strongly limits the use for this purpose. In this study, we developed a covalent chemical strategy in order to obtain a hybrid GO-macroporous silicon (PSi) structure for biomedical applications. The realized structure was characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM)water contact angle (WCA) measurements, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and label- free optical methods based on spectroscopic reflectometry and PL analysis. Investigations showed that the hybrid structure is suitable as a transducer material for biosensing applications due to its peculiar optical properties resulting from the combination of GO and PSi.