Raspberrylike SiO2@reduced graphene oxide@AgNP composite microspheres with high aqueous dispersity and excellent catalytic activity.

The hybridizations of functional microspheres with graphene or graphene oxide (GO) sheets often suffer from severe agglomeration behaviors, leading to poor water dispersity of the resultant composite materials. Here, we first demonstrate that the sonication-assisted self-assembly of tiny GO sheets (whose lateral size less than 200 nm) on microspheric substrates like cationic polyelectrolyte-modified SiO2 microspheres could effectively overcome such a common drawback. On the basis of this facile strategy, we further developed reduced graphene oxide/silver nanoparticle composite film wrapped SiO2 microspheres, which not only possessed unique raspberrylike structure and high aqueous dispersity but also exhibited exceptional catalytic activity toward the reduction of 4-nitrophenol.