Recent Advances in Metal Alloy-Graphene Hybrids for Biosensors

Recently, one of the more effective approaches to creating multifunctional materials with remarkable enhancement in their electric, physical, and chemical properties has been the synthesis of metal alloy-graphene-based nanohybrids. Due to their outstanding properties, these materials have been widely studied, both in academia and industry, for numerous applications in energy conversion/storage technologies and sensors. This chapter comprehensively reviews the significant advances in development of metal alloy-graphene nanohybrid materials and their application in biosensors to date. A number of synthesis methods to achieve metal alloy-graphene nanohybrids, along with various types of metal alloy consistent with different nanostructures, have been emphasized. In addition, the structural and morphological characteristics have been highlighted to realize the structure-property relationship and improvement in physicochemical properties of the metal alloy-graphene nanohybrids. Finally, the chapter discusses recent promising research of metal alloy-graphene nanohybrid materials in the area of biomolecule detection, including glucose, hydrogen peroxide, vanillin, methotrexate, dopamine (DA), chlorpyrifos, nifedipine, ascorbic acid (AA), nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), DNA, RNA, and carcinoembryonic antigen. In all cases, the metal alloy-graphene-based biosensors demonstrated excellent sensing performance, with good sensitivity, wide linear detection range, low detection limit, short time response, and long-term working and storage stability.