“Interactional Fingerprints” Offer Cheaper, Faster Quality Control for Graphene Oxide

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Researchers at King’s College London have developed a low-cost, rapid way to verify the quality of graphene oxide (GO), potentially reducing a significant barrier to its wider use.

The research is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Creating a unique fingerprint for each sample

Since graphene was first isolated in 2010, interest in graphene-based materials has grown due to their strength, light weight and electrical conductivity. GO, a chemically modified form of graphene, is seen as promising for areas such as battery technology.

However, the addition of oxygen groups during production can vary, creating inconsistencies between batches. Existing testing methods for GO can take weeks and cost thousands of pounds per sample, with many researchers unable to access the required equipment.

“Graphene oxide is really promising. But if we’re to make good progress, we need to confirm that a new batch is like the last one. If your supply is unreliable – and behaves differently every time – how do you go about designing better products?” said principal author, Dr Andrew Surman, senior lecturer in chemistry at King’s College London.

“Our approach should allow researchers and materials producers to perform a test in a couple of hours, using cheap tools they likely already have access to, to quickly quality control their samples where they work,” Surman continued. “By helping teams troubleshoot variation in their supply it helps ensure what they are working with is up to scratch, freeing them up for the important business of innovation in next-generation technology.”

How the new method works

The technique uses a molecular probing device to mix small amounts of GO suspended in water with fluorescent probes. These probes change their light output depending on properties of the GO, such as oxygen content and flake size.

By mapping these changes mathematically, researchers can create a reproducible “fingerprint” that distinguishes one type of GO from another. The process can be completed in hours using equipment already found in most labs.

This “interactional fingerprinting” approach gives each GO sample a distinctive profile. The process mimics how the senses of taste and smell work, producing a qualitative snapshot without the need for high-cost specialist instruments. This means researchers can confirm whether different batches are consistent without relying on slow, expensive tests.

Applications beyond graphene oxide

Although developed for GO, the method is not limited to this material. The researchers suggest it could also be applied to other advanced materials, such as borophene, to help move them more quickly from the research stage into practical applications.

Reference:Vergara-Arenas BI, Shepherd E, Alfaro I, Cross E, Le H, Surman AJ. Interactional fingerprints offer accessible, rapid, and qualitative characterization of graphene oxide. J Am Chem Soc. 2025;147(29):25471-25477. doi: 10.1021/jacs.5c05355

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