The Spanish Graphenea collaborated with researchers from the French CNRS and SENSIA SL to design a graphene-based biosensor and develop a graphene-based method to destroy harmful bacteria.
The researchers studied the possibility to kill E. coli pathogens using reduced graphene oxide (rGO-PEG-NH2) and Au nanorods (Nrs) coated with rGO-PEG-NH2 by laser irradiation. The encapsulation of Au NRs with rGO-PEG not only decreases the toxicity of Au NRs, but also enhances the overall photothermal process and thus the temperatures which can be reached. 99% killing efficiency of bacteria was demonstrated in a water solution, at low concentrations (20-49 mg/ml).
In a separate paper by the same collaborating researchers, high quality CVD graphene grown on metal was transferred into a detection chip . A graphene layer on gold was shown to act as an excellent sensor of DNA hybridization, with superb attomolar sensitivity. This work demonstrated the sensitivity of detection of DNA with a concentration of a few attomoles, using a commercial surface plasmon resonance instrument.