Facile self-assembly of pyromellitic acid modified graphene oxide sheets into rhodamine B for highly selective luminescent sensing of Fe3+

In this paper, a novel modified graphene oxide sheets (GOSs) has been synthesized based on pyromellitic acid (PMA) depositing on the surface of GOSs via noncovalent approach. Fourier Transform Infrared spectra (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction patterns (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were adopted to investigate its structure. The as-prepared materials are dispersed in Rhodamine-B (RB) solutions which show highly efficient fluorescence. This phenomenon suggests the quenching effect of graphene oxide can be effectively weakened via rational structural modification. Moreover, this dispersion serving as a fluorescent probe still has a relatively high selectivity and sensitivity (Stern-Volmer constant KSV = 4.58*104 L mol−1) to Fe3+ ions.