Copper decorated polyaniline nanowires: A tow-step electrochemical synthesis and a development of a non-enzymatic electrochemical glucose sensor

Abstract

In this work, a nanostructured electrode material based on copper metal decorated polyaniline nanowires (PANi NWs@Cu) was directly fabricated on a Pt (Pt/PANi NWs@Cu) microelectrode using a novel and effective two-step electrochemical procedure. Herein, the polyaniline nanowires were firstly electropolymerized on the Pt microelectrode using a cyclic voltammetry method, and the copper metal coated onto the polyaniline nanowires were fabricated via a chronoamperometry deposition to form the PANi NWs@Cu with an average diameter of 85 nm. The electrocatalytic activity showed that the as-synthesized PANi NWs@Cu can directly oxidize glucose in alkaline medium, which suggested that the PANi NWs@Cu can be applied as an artificial enzyme for development of a non-enzymatic electrochemical glucose sensor. Obtained results exhibits that the Pt/PANi NWs@Cu has the ability to directly detect glucose with a rapid response, high selectivity, good repeatability, excellent stability with a wide linear range of glucose concentration from 0.5 mM to 50.0 mM and a low detection limit of 94 μM. The developed Pt/PANi NWs@Cu-based electrochemical sensor also shows the ability to directly detect glucose in a 5% glucose intravenous infusion sample with an error of 1.21% from a labelled value.