Explosion in the preparation of nanoparticles: monodisperse Ag inserted in 3D graphene sheets for the electrochemical detection of H 2 O 2 .

In this work, the smashing effect of explosives innovatively led to the preparation of nanoparticles. The energetic material 3,5-dinitrobenzoic acid (DNBA) was introduced as a ligand to coordinate with silver ions and connect graphene sheets via electrostatic attraction in the sol-gel process. Owing to the thermolysis of DNBA, the pore-formation of graphene sheets, thermal reduction of Ag + and achievement of monodisperse Ag nanoparticles were realized simultaneously. The morphology and composition of the nanocomposites were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Then, the nanocomposite was used to construct a hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) sensor, which displayed excellent catalytic performance over a wide linear concentration range of 4 × 10 -5 to 4 × 10 -3 mM with a corresponding sensitivity of 72 μA mM -1 cm -2 and detection limit of 101.25 nM with a signal-to-noise ratio of 3.