A new microplatform based on titanium dioxide nanofibers/graphene oxide nanosheets nanocomposite modified screen printed carbon electrode for electrochemical determination of adenine in the presence of guanine

Abstract

The current techniques for determining adenine have several shortcomings such as high cost, high time consumption, tedious pretreatment steps and the requirements for highly skilled personnel often restrict their use in routine analytical practice. This paper describes the development and utilization of a new nanocomposite consisting of titanium dioxide nanofibers (TNFs) and graphene oxide nanosheets (GONs) for screen printed carbon electrode (SPCE) modification. The synthesized GONs and TNFs were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The modified electrode (TNFs/GONs/SPCE) was used for electrochemical characterization of adenine. The TNFs/GONs/SPCE exhibited an increase in peak current and the electron transfer kinetics and decrease in the overpotential for the oxidation reaction of adenine. Using differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), the prepared sensor showed good sensitivity for determining adenine in two ranges from 0.1–1 and 1–10μM, with a detection limit (DL) of 1.71nM. Electrochemical studies suggested that the TNFs/GONs/SPCE provided a synergistic augmentation on the voltammetric behavior of electrochemical oxidation of adenine, which was indicated by the improvement of anodic peak current and a decrease in anodic peak potential. The amount of adenine in pBudCE4.1 plasmid was determined via the proposed sensor and the result was in good compatibility with the sequence data of pBudCE4.1 plasmid.