A Hybrid of FeS2 Nanoparticles Encapsulated by Two-Dimensional Carbon Sheets as Excellent Nanozymes for Colorimetric Glucose Detection.

Abstract

Recently, the development of nanozymes with high catalytic performance is gaining more and more attention due to the ever-growing demands for their practical applications. The elaborate design of its morphology has demonstrated to be an effective approach to improve the performance of these nanozymes. Herein, a hybrid of iron disulfide nanoparticles (FeS2 NPs) encapsulated by two-dimensional (2D) carbon nanosheets (NSs), denoted as FeS2@C NSs, demonstrates both superior peroxidase-like activity and excellent stability. The incorporation of 2D carbon sheets endows the proposed FeS2@C nanozymes with high specific surface area, providing abundant active sites to facilitate the contact with substrates. Moreover, the embedded FeS2 NPs are kept from aggregation due to the encapsulation and confinement of 2D carbon sheets, avoiding the conventional failure of single-component nanozymes. Based on glucose oxidase (GOx) and the elaborately designed FeS2@C nanozymes, a colorimetric method for glucose detection is then developed with excellent simplicity and sensitivity. The detection limit of the sensing platform is as low as 0.19 μM for a glucose assay. More notably, this method can be successfully employed for the glucose assay in some real samples, indicating the great potential of this FeS2@C NS-based nanozymes in the fields of biotechnology and clinical diagnostics.