Electrochemical assembling of nano-MOFs at carbon fiber for the high-performance uric acid sensing

Abstract

Recently, deposition and growth of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) nanostructures at conductive substrate has been revealed as the very inspiring strategy for developing novel sensing platform. Herein, by using facile electrochemical assembling method, zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), typical MOFs formed by Zn2+ and 2-methylimidazole, were introduced onto carbon fiber cloth, leading to a sword-like nano-ZIFs modified carbon fiber (SN-ZIFs/CF) platform. The unique morphology, structure, and composition of SN-ZIFs/CF were characterized. Notably, SN-ZIFs/CF could significantly promote the direct electrooxidation of uric acid (UA) with less overpotential and enhanced current density. SN-ZIFs/CF sensor display a superb sensing performance with very broad detection range (0.01–2800 μM) and low detection limit (5.6 nM, S/N = 3). Excellent selectivity, reliability, and stability were also observed. Besides, SN-ZIFs/CF sensor could be regenerated by a simple electrochemical procedure. Moreover, in the UA measurement of normal or hyperuricemia serum, SN-ZIFs/CF sensor showed an extremely reliable and accurate detection results, comparing with the hospital reports. Our results indicated that potentiostatic assembling method could be a preferable electrochemical strategy for the nano-MOFs growing at conductive substrate, which could be used to design and build captivating electrochemical platform for the notable sensors or other electrochemical applications.