A facile one-pot hydrothermal synthesis of tin sulfide-decorated reduced graphene oxide nanoribbons and its sensing application for a flavanone naringenin

Abstract

New electrode materials have been synthesized extensively with the aim of enhancing sensitivity and selectivity besides decreasing the overpotential of electrode reactions. Present work describes the design of a new one-pot hydrothermal route for the preparation of highly electroactive nanocomposite, SnS2 decorated reduced graphene oxide nanoribbons (designated as SnS2-rGONRs) for analytical and binding applications of a flavanone, naringenin (NAR). Electrode materials were characterized by XRD, Raman, TEM and AFM techniques. SnS2-rGONRs based electrochemical sensor was fabricated by drop casting of SnS2-rGONRs dispersion on GCE surface (SnS2-rGONRs/GCE). SnS2-rGONRs/GCE was utilized to explore the detailed electrochemistry of NAR and to unravel the mechanism of interaction of NAR with human serum albumin. About 50-fold enhancement in the electrochemical response of NAR was observed at SnS2-rGONRs/GCE compared to that noticed at bare GCE, suggesting that the interface SnS2-rGONRs has an excellent charge transfer capability. Influence of pH and scan rate was studied to explore the electrode kinetics of NAR. Under the optimized conditions, a linear relationship between the peak current and concentration of NAR was observed in the range of 0.49–56.6μM. Proposed electrode, SnS2-rGONRs/GCE was employed for the determination of NAR in analyte fortified biological samples. Binding characteristics viz., binding constant, stiochiometry and mode of interaction of NAR with drug carrier protein, human serum albumin (HSA) was also explored using the proposed sensor. Binding constant of NAR-HSA was found to be in the order of 104M−1 and one molecule of NAR was bound to one macromolecule of HSA.