A facile one-pot synthesis of Au core flower surrounding with thin Co3O4 shell for highly sensitive detection of hydrogen peroxide

Abstract

In this study, we described the facile synthesis of Au core flower surrounding with thin Co3O4 shell for enhanced electrochemical sensing of H2O2. Such core-shell structure was obtained by employing Au3+ to oxidize Co2+ under alkaline conditions for triggering the redox assembly process. The experiment results revealed that conductive Au core flower was surrounded by thin Co3O4 shell, and such structure not only accelerates electron transfer rate but also provides more effective active sites for H2O2 reaction, therefore making the sensor based on Au@Co3O4 exhibit an excellent performance for H2O2 analysis with a linear range of 0.2 μM-7.1 mM, a high sensitivity of 722.4 μA mM−1 cm-2 and a low detection limit of 0.06 μM. The excellent experimental results implied that Au@Co3O4 nanocomposite was a promising sensing material for electrochemical detection of H2O2.