Covalent modification of exfoliated fluorographite with nitrogen functionalities

Fluorographene, as a completely fluorinated counterpart of graphene, holds great promise for applications in high performance materials such as batteries, dielectrics or biosensors. However, its chemical inertness and low solubility hinders its use in practical devices. Here, water-soluble exfoliated fluorographite is obtained by covalent modification with amino groups. The simplicity of our method may be easily extended to study the effect that chemical modification has on the properties of single layer fluorographene, which have not yet been studied. Moreover, we have further employed the new nitrogen functionalities to selectively bind gold nanoparticles, which may enable novel or enhanced sensing, catalytic or electrochemical applications