Organophilicity of GO for Enhanced Wettability of ZnO

---

We propose a hydroxyl-based dissociation-exchange mechanism to understand interfacial interactions responsible for GO adsorption onto ZnO nanorods hydrophobic substrates. The proposed mechanism initiated from mixing GO suspensions with various organics to overcome the poor wettability of the superhydrophobic ZnO nanorods to the drop-casted GO.

The wettability study shows as high as 75% reduction in the contact angle (θ = 35.5°) when the GO suspension is mixed with alcohols (e.g., ethanol) prior to interfacing with ZnO nanorods.

The proposed method leverages a scalable technique for developing graphene−ZnO heterojunctions; interfacing wide band gap semiconductor with graphene for future optoelectronic applications.