Due to the growing demand for advanced materials in energy storage, environmental protection, and healthcare, graphene-based materials have attracted widespread attention for their electrical, mechanical, and surface properties. These materials hold utility across rechargeable batteries, supercapacitors, hydrogen production, pollution removal, sensors, and biomedical systems. However, conventional methods for producing reduced graphene oxide rely on hazardous chemical reducing agents such as hydrazine and sodium borohydride, which generate toxic waste and restrict safe deployment. Addressing these environmental and biosafety challenges, Dr Narayanamoorthy Bhuvanendran from SRM University-AP has examined sustainable green synthesis routes that utilise plant extracts, amino acids, vitamins, and sugars as non-toxic alternatives.
In a paper published in Discover Materials, a Q1 journal with an impact factor of 5.8 published by Springer, Dr Narayanamoorthy Bhuvanendran, Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering at SRM University-AP, authored a comprehensive review in collaboration with Prof. Sang-Shin Lee and Dr Loganathan Kulandaivel from the Nano Device Application Center at Kwangwoon University, South Korea. The study is titled “A critical review of green chemistry driven approaches for the sustainable synthesis of graphene-based hybrid nanomaterials for energy, environmental, and biomedical applications“.
The conventional chemical reduction of graphene oxide (GO) to reduced graphene oxide (rGO) employs harmful reducing agents, such as hydrazine and sodium borohydride. These chemicals create toxic byproducts, present serious environmental risks, and decrease biocompatibility in biomedical applications. This review outlines bioinspired reduction methods using plant extracts and biomolecules as cost-effective non-toxic alternatives, acting as reducing, stabilizing and capping agents at the same time. These environmentally benign reductants allow for efficient deoxygenation under mild aqueous conditions while simultaneously providing advantageous surface properties that improve colloidal stability and bio-interfacial properties. We systematically investigate the correlations between material structure, physicochemical properties and application performance in energy storage, environmental remediation, sensing and biomedical fields, and clarify the distinct mechanistic connections between the choice of reductants and functional performance. This review summarizes current research and critically discusses the environmental trade-offs associated with green synthesis, including water usage, energy intensive drying, purification needs and total resource consumption, all of which can significantly affect the sustainability of these processes. Moreover, we identify the absence of standardized regulatory and evaluative frameworks and emphasize the need for standardized assessment methods to facilitate the safe and scalable development of green-synthesized graphene products. This review provides a detailed framework for the development of sustainable graphene technologies through the comparison of the effectiveness of green synthesized rGO with conventionally reduced rGO, addressing key challenges such as reproducibility, scalability, life cycle sustainability, and biosafety assessment, thereby enabling from research to economically environmentally industrial applications the translation laboratory viable responsible and across various sectors.
The practical implementation of green-synthesized graphene materials spans clean energy systems, environmental remediation, sensing technologies, and safer biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery and antimicrobials. Replacing hazardous chemical reductants with natural biomolecules lowers industrial toxic waste, making production safer and more environmentally benign. However, translating these laboratory successes to commercial scales requires addressing challenges related to raw material composition variability, water and energy consumption during processing, and the establishment of standardized safety regulations. Moving forward, future research will focus on developing green-synthesized graphene hybrids that deliver higher stability, cost efficiency, and functional performance, alongside scalable synthetic frameworks tailored for real-world industrial adoption.
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