Harnessing Nitrogen-Doped Graphene Quantum Dots for Enhancing the Fluorescence and Conductivity of the Starch-Based Film

Abstract

The flexible film is wildly applied in modern electronic industry, whilst it is still challenging to derive the carbohydrate-based materials multifunctional in conductivity and fluorescence. Starch as a renewable biopolymer is seldom studied as a substrate for preparing the flexible wearable device. In the study, a novel conductive, fluorescent and flexible polymer film was prepared via a cost-effective method by fabricating the nitrogen-doped oxide reduced graphene quantum dots (N-rGO-QDs) into the thermoplastic starch (TPS) based bio-polymer matrix. It is found that TPS/N-rGO-QDs film with 10 wt% N-rGO-QDs showed the desirable lowest resistivity (0.084 Ω·m), acceptable light transmittance (60-80%) and durable fluorescence intensity (9000 CPS). It suggests a novel carbohydrate-based multifunctional film with conductivity and fluorescence, which is hypothesized hopefully applied in some frontier domains, like monitoring human mobile activities.

Keywords: Starch-based film, N-rGO-QDs, Fluorescence, conductivity, Flexibility