Mimicking the Active Sites of Organophosphorus Hydrolase on the Backbone of Graphene Oxide to Destroy Nerve Agent Simulants

Abstract

Recent global military events, such as the conflict in Syria, have emphasized the need to find effective strategies to rapidly destroy organophosphorus-based nerve agents. In this work, we designed active site-engineered graphene oxide (GO) via polymerization (polymer bead-GOs) as organophosphorus hydrolase (OPH) mimetic hotspots for the rapid degradation of nerve agents. This hybrid catalyst has a high total turnover frequency value of 0.65 s^-1 and good stability (94.8% activity maintained after 5 cycles). Mechanism investigations suggested that the high catalytic performance could be attributed to the synergistic effect among the clusters of imidazole and the presence of - COOH groups on the GO surface and Zn²⁺.