Preparation and characterization of graphene oxide encapsulated gold nanoparticles

We present a simple approach for the fabrication of graphene oxide-encapsulated gold nanoparticles using graphene oxide sheet-wrapping via electrostatic self-assembly. By mixing bovine serum albumin molecule-functionalized gold nanoparticles with graphene oxide dispersion, positively charged bovine serum albumin/gold nanoparticles easily assembled with negatively charged graphene oxide sheets through electrostatic interaction. Transmittance electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy were used to confirm the encapsulation of graphene oxide on gold nanoparticles. Interestingly, graphene oxide sheets wrapping mainly occurs along the main body of single or a few gold nanoparticles. Additionally, by measuring the ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy spectrum, we found that the surface plasmon resonances band of the graphene oxide-encapsulated gold nanoparticles was found to become red-shifted compared to that of pristine gold nanoparticles, whereas similar to that of bovine serum albumin-coated gold nanoparticles. These results indicating that most of graphene oxide-encapsulated gold nanoparticles have good monodispersity and spherical shape. These resulting materials may potentially serve as a platform for plasmon resonance electron transfer spectroscopy or a probe for low level biosensing.