Highly efficient fluorescence quenching with chemically exfoliated reduced graphene oxide

Fluorescence quenching is a valuable tool to study many macromolecular assemblies. It is well-known that graphitic systems such as the reduced graphene oxide (rGO) can strongly quench the emission of dye molecules through energy transfer. In this work, the authors demonstrate comparative study of fluorescence quenching between different graphitic system such as rGO, graphene oxide (GO), and graphite, which is not reported so far. As compared to graphite and GO sheets, rGO shows more quenching capability because of more surface area and efficient π-π stacking. The fluorescence quenching has been performed using Rhodamine B dye. The scanning electron microscopic micrographs revealed that Rhodamine B dye is uniformly absorbed on rGO. The fluorescence quenching has been done with the fixed concentration of Rhodamine organic dye with all three forms of carbon. The spectroscopic results exhibit that the chemically exfoliated rGO was almost 16 times better than graphite and GO. The obtained results suggest that rGO can be used for better quenching capability in biosensing applications.