Aiming to deeply understand the electrocatalytic mechanism of silver on reduction of benzyl chloride, we carried out an in situ electrochemical surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopic study to characterize various surface species in different electrode potential regions. A further analysis with DFT calculation reveals that the benzyl radical and its anionic derivate bonded on a silver electrode are the key intermediates, implying that the pathway could drastically differ from the outer sphere concerted electron reduction at inert electrodes.

Graphene, a one-atom thick planar sheet of sp2bonded carbon atoms packed in a honeycomb lattice, is considered to be the mother of all graphitic materials like fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and graphite. Graphene has created tremendous interest to both physicists and chemists due to its various fascinating properties, both observed and predicted with possible potential applications in nanoelectronics, supercapacitors, solar cells, batteries, flexible displays, hydrogen storage, and sensors. In this paper, a brief overview on various aspects of graphene such as synthesis, functionalization, self-assembly, and some of its amazing properties along with its various applications ranging from sensors to energy storage devices had been illustrated.

Nearly monodisperse single-crystalline palladium (Pd) nanocubes and nanodendrites have been successfully prepared in aqueous solution at room temperature, for the first time, mainly by utilizing the equilibrium between the dissolution and precipitation of the Pd-cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (Pd-CTAB) complexes. The morphology of the obtained Pd nanocrystals call be tuned by the addition of foreign halide ions (Cl- and Br-). The corresponding selected area electron diffraction (SAED) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns confirmed that the synthesis of nanocubes and nanodendrites are single-crystalline pure Pd structures with fee crystal lattice. A preliminary formation mechanism based on the dissolution and precipitation of the Pd-CTAB complexes and competitive adsorption between different ions oil the nanoparticle Surface has been proposed.Natural Science Foundation of China [20620130427]; Ministry of Science and Technology [2007CB815303]; Department of Chemistry, Xiamen University [J0630429

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy has great advantages as a spectroscopic analytical tool due to the large enhancement of the weak Raman signal and thereby facilitates suitable identification of chemical and biological systems.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

A stable aqueous dispersion (5 mg ml −1) of graphene was synthesized by a simple protocol based on three-step reduction of graphene oxide (GO) dispersion synthesized using the modified version of Hummers and Offeman method. Reduction of GO was carried out using sodium borohydride, hydrazine hydrate and dimethyl hydrazine as reducing agents. The chemically synthesized graphene was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV-visible absorption spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), optical microscopy. The stability of aqueous dispersions of graphene was confirmed through zeta potential measurements and the negative zeta potentials of 55-60 mV were obtained indicating the high stability of aqueous graphene dispersions.