Iron impurities as the active sites for peroxidase-like catalytic reaction on graphene and its derivatives

We established four kinds of good dispersing systems of graphene and its derivatives with different structural characteristics to estimate their peroxidase-like activity. Besides graphene oxide (GO), it is demonstrated that defect-free graphene, low-oxygen graphene, and iron(III)-doped graphene oxide (GO-Fe) are all capable of H2O2 activation to oxidize peroxidase substrates. As for defect-free graphene, the dispersibility in reaction medium exerts great impact on its catalytic activity and our further judgements concerning the nature of active sites. Improved stability and further exfoliation of defect-free graphene in reaction medium are beneficial to the access of reactants to active sites on the basal planes and enhance its peroxidase-like activity, which is superior to that of low-oxygen graphene and much higher than that of GO. In addition, their peroxidase-like activity can be greatly inhibited by the addition of iron chelators. Interestingly, the introduction of trace ferric ions into GO does not lead to an apparent change except for remarkable increase of its peroxidase-like activity. Therefore, we propose that the observed iron impurities rather than the doped nonmetallic heteroatoms play an important role in the peroxidase-like activity of graphene and its derivatives. In this light, saturated iron(III) was immobilized onto the oxygen-donor coordination of GO to immensely promote its activity. The peroxidase-like activity of the prepared GO-Fe was systematically evaluated by using 3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine and pyrogallol as peroxidase substrates and was compared to that of horseradish peroxidase and hemin. As a result, GO-Fe shows excellent peroxidase-like catalytic activity, which is comparable to that of hemin. Furthermore, GO-Fe was used for the quantitative detection of H2O2 and glucose.