A room-temperature chemical route to homogeneous core–shell Cu2O structures and their application in biosensors

Abstract

Homogeneous core–shell structured cuprous oxide (Cu2O) is fabricated through a facile reduction reaction at room temperature (20–25 °C). Ostwald ripening processes are proposed to explain the growth mechanism of the homogeneous Cu2O core–shell structure. The electrochemical impedance spectrum (EIS), cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) show that the modified electrodes with the obtained homogeneous core–shell Cu2O exhibit high efficiency and convenience toward the detection of dopamine (DA). The anodic peak current increases linearly with the concentration of dopamine in the range of 3.0 × 10−7 to 5 × 10−4 M. The detection limit has been estimated to be 1.0 × 10−7 M. The high sensitivity of the determination of dopamine by using the modified electrode implies that homogeneous core–shell Cu2O may be of great potential in the field of biosensors.