Construction of MOF-74 derived CuFe/C alloy highly dispersed on ultrathin single layered reduced graphene for electrochemical determination of paracetamol

Abstract

Paracetamol (PAT) is a widely used drug for fever reduction and pain relief, but its accumulation due to overuse can lead to detrimental effects on human health and environment. Here, a novel composite material CuFe/C@rGO with excellent electrochemical properties was successfully constructed by loading carbon-encapsulated CuFe alloy (CuFe/C) on ultrathin single layered reduced graphene oxide (rGO) surface for PAT detection. Firstly, the CuFe/C nanoparticles was derived from MOF-74 as bimetallic ‘preassembly platform’ to obtain high dispersiveness, huge accessible surface area, and uniform pore structure of the resulted material. And then the CuFe/C was uniformly dispersed on rGO to effectively avoid the aggregation of CuFe/C and increase the conductivity of composite material. In virtue of the synergistic effect of CuFe/C and rGO, the composite material modified glassy carbon electrode CuFe/C@rGO/GCE would be endowed with abundant electrocatalytic acitive sites and fast charge transfer speed between electrode surface and analyte. Expectedly, the CuFe/C@rGO/GCE shows outstanding sensing performance with wide linear ranges of 0.006–110 μM, low detection limit of 0.0015 μM (S/N=3), together with superior reproducibility, stability and anti-interference. This developed composite material as a flexible sensing platform can be used to detect PAT in real samples with a satisfactory recovery.