Novel oxidative cutting graphene oxide to graphene quantum dots for electrochemical sensing application

Abstract Here, for the first time, an integrated O 3 /H 2 O 2 /ultrasound process was proposed for the synthesis of graphene quantum dots (GQDs) with uniform lateral dimension of 4–10 nm. The hydroxyl radicals dominated cleavage effect was mainly responsible for tailoring graphene sheets into quantum dots. The resultant GQDs exhibited superior performance as electrode materials for electrochemically monitoring trace Cu 2+ with a detection limit as low as 3 × 10 −10  M.