Flexible carbon cloth in-situ assembling WO3 microsheets bunches with Ni dopants for non-enzymatic glucose sensing

Abstract

Smart and reliable glucose sensing is highly desired in biochemistry, clinical chemistry and food analysis. Such glucose sensing requires being simultaneously endowed with high sensitivity, selectivity and flexibility, and low detection limit, however, remains challenging. Herein, we have developed a flexible electrochemical non-enzymatic glucose sensing electrode with nickel (Ni) doping tungsten trioxide (WO3) microsheets bunches (MSBs) in-situ assembling onto carbon cloth (denoted as Ni/WO3 MSBs@CC), which has been prepared via combined Ni foam-assisted hydrothermal process and calcination. Interestingly, the pure WO3 nanoparticles are transformed into hierarchical microsheets in the presence of Ni dopants. Moreover, the Ni/WO3 MSBs@CC shows excellent electrocatalytic activity toward glucose with a high sensitivity up to 890 μA·mM−1·cm−2, a low detection limit of ∼ 0.9 μM (S/N = 3) and a wide linear range of 5–255 μM. As is attributed to that Ni dopants modulate the electronic structure of WO3, and generate more oxygen vacancy defects for enhancing glucose oxidation. Meanwhile, the hierarchical microsheets assembled upon the carbon cloth expose a larger specific surface area, contributing to faster electron transfer. Impressively, the Ni/WO3 MSBs@CC exhibits excellent flexibility, repeatability, long-term stability and anti-bending stability, which is potential in future intelligent diagnosis and analysis.