The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color center in chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond has been widely investigated in quantum information and quantum biosensors due to its excellent photon emission stability and long spin coherence time. However, the temperature dependence of the energy level of NV color centers in diamond is different from other semiconductors with the same diamond cubic structure for the high Debye temperature and very small thermal expansion coefficient of diamond. In this work, a diamond sensor for temperature measurement with high precision was fabricated based on the investigation of the energy level shifts of NV centers by Raman and photoluminescence (PL) spectra. The results show that the intensity and linewidth of the zero-phonon line of NV centers highly depend on the environmental temperature, and the energy level shifts of NV centers in diamond follow the modified Varshni model very well, a model which is better than the traditional version. Accordingly, the NV color center shows the ability in temperature measurement with a high accuracy of up to 98%. The high dependence of NV centers on environmental temperature shows the possibility of temperature monitoring of NV center-based quantum sensors in biosystems.

Given the thermal management problem aroused by increasing power densities of electronic components in the system, graphene-based papers have raised considerable interest for applications as thermal interface materials (TIMs) to solve interfacial heat transfer issues. Significant research efforts have focused on enhancing the through-plane thermal conductivity of graphene paper; however, for practical thermal management applications, reducing the thermal contact resistance between graphene paper and the mating surface is also a challenge to be addressed. Here, a strategy aimed at reducing the thermal contact resistance between graphene paper and the mating surface to realize enhanced heat dissipation was demonstrated. For this, graphene paper was decorated with polydopamine EGaIn nanocapsules using a facile dip-coating process. In practical TIM application, there was a decrease in the thermal contact resistance between the TIMs and mating surface after decoration (from 46 to 15 K mm² W⁻¹), which enabled the decorated paper to realize a 26% enhancement of cooling efficiency compared with the case without decoration. This demonstrated that this method is a promising route to enhance the heat dissipation capacity of graphene-based TIMs for practical electronic cooling applications.

Graphene is an excellent modifier for the surface modification of electrochemical electrodes due to its exceptional physical properties and, for the development of graphene-based chemical and biosensors, is usually coated on glassy carbon electrodes (GCEs) via drop casting. However, the ease of aggregation and high defect content of reduced graphene oxides degrade the electrical properties. Here, we fabricated low-defect graphene electrodes by catalytically thermal treatment of HPHT diamond substrate, followed by the electrodeposition of Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) with an average size of ≈60 nm on the electrode surface using cyclic voltammetry. The Au nanoparticle-decorated graphene electrodes show a wide linear response range to vanillin from 0.2 to 40 µM with a low limit of detection of 10 nM. This work demonstrates the potential applications of graphene-based hybrid electrodes for highly sensitive chemical detection.

The development of accurate, reliable devices for glucose detection has drawn much attention from the scientific community over the past few years. Here, we report a single-step method to fabricate Ni nanoparticle-modified graphene–diamond hybrid electrodes via a catalytic thermal treatment, by which the graphene layers are directly grown on the diamond surface using Ni thin film as a catalyst, meanwhile, Ni nanoparticles are formed in situ on the graphene surface due to dewetting behavior. The good interface between the Ni nanoparticles and the graphene guarantees efficient charge transfer during electrochemical detection. The fabricated electrodes exhibit good glucose sensing performance with a low detection limit of 2 μM and a linear detection range between 2 μM–1 mM. In addition, this sensor shows great selectivity, suggesting potential applications for sensitive and accurate monitoring of glucose in human blood.

It is of great significance to distinguish enantiomers due to their different, even completely opposite biological, physiological and pharmacological activities compared to those with different stereochemistry. A sp³-to-sp² converted highly stable and regenerative graphene/diamond electrode (G/D) was proposed as an enantiomer recognition platform after a simple β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) drop casting process. The proposed enantiomer recognition sensor has been successfully used for d and l-phenylalanine recognition. In addition, the G/D electrode can be simply regenerated by half-minute sonication due to the strong interfacial bonding between graphene and diamond. Therefore, the proposed G/D electrode showed significant potential as a reusable sensing platform for enantiomer recognition.

This review provides a comprehensive overview of the recent progresses in flexible heat spreaders based on functionalized boron nitride nanosheets (f-BNNSs) and provides insights into the potential of this material for efficient thermal management solutions. The unique thermal properties of boron nitride nanosheets (BNNSs), such as high thermal conductivity and excellent mechanical flexibility, make them promising materials for heat dissipation. Various methods of functionalizing BNNSs to enhance their thermal and mechanical properties are discussed, including covalent functionalization and noncovalent functionalization. The numerous advanced methods to introduce f-BNNSs into polymers and the potential applications of the composites based on f-BNNSs in areas such as thermal management in electronic devices are also highlighted.