Abstract
Pristine graphene (G) has not received much attention as a catalyst support, presumably due to its relative inertness as compared to reduced graphene oxide (RGO). In the present work, we used swollen liquid crystals (SLCs) as nano-reactors for graphene-palladium nanocomposites synthesis. The 'soft' confinement of SLCs directs the growth of palladium (Pd) nanoparticles over the G sheets. In this dataset we include all the parameters and details of different techniques used for the characterization of G, SLCs and synthesized G-Pd nanocomposites. The synthesized G-palladium nanocomposites (Pd-G) exhibited improved catalytic activity compared with Pd-RGO and Pd nanoparticles, in the hydrogenation of nitrophenols and C-C coupling reactions.