Semiconductor pn junctions are elementary building blocks of many electronic devices such as transistors, solar cells, photodetectors, and integrated circuits. Due to the absence of an energy bandgap and massless Dirac-like behaviour of charge carriers, graphene pn junction with electrical current rectification characteristics is hardly achieved. Here we show a graphene pn junction diode can be made exclusively from carbon materials by laminating two layers of positively and negatively charged graphene oxides. As the interdiffusion of oppositely charged mobile counterions, a built-in potential is created to rectify the current by changing the tunnelling probability of electrons across the junction. This graphene diode is semi-transparent, can perform simple logic operations, and since it has carbon nanotubes electrodes, we demonstrate an all carbon materials pn diode. We expect this graphene diode will expand material choices and provide functionalities (e.g. grafting recognition units on graphene oxides) beyond that of traditional semiconductor pn junctions.
Efficient resolution of racemic mixture has long been an attractive but challenging subject since Pasteur separated tartrate enantiomers in 19 century. Graphene oxide (GO) could be flexibly functionalized by using a variety of chiral host molecules and therefore, was expected to show excellent enantioselective resolution performance. However, this combination with efficient enantioselective resolution capability has been scarcely demonstrated. Here, nanoporous graphene oxides were produced and then covalently functionalized by using a chiral host material-β-cyclodextrin (β-CD). This chiral GO displayed enantioselective affinity toward the l-enantiomers of amino acids. In particular, >99 % of l-asparagine (Asn) was captured in a racemic solution of Asn while the adsorption of d-enantiomer was not observed. This remarkable resolution performance was subsequently modelled by using an attach-pull-release dynamic method. We expect this preliminary concept could be expanded to other chiral host molecules and be employed to current membrane separation technologies and finally show practical use for many other racemates.
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