General synthesis of hybrid electrodes with vertical multistage pore-arrays via biphasic interfacial assembly for favorable electrochemical sensing

Abstract

• 1. Biphasic interfacial assembly method was addressed to optimize the hybrid electrodes. • 2. The typical product of CC/MMPCA presented multistaged sizes from ca. 10 to 250 nm. • 3. The CC/MMPCA-based sensor showed high selectivity and ultra-low LOD (0.27 µM) to DA. • 4. Achieving successful extension to other substrates for rapid and in situ detection. Hybrid electrodes based on conductive inorganic substrates and organic porous structured polymer have attracted significantly scientific and technological interests in numerous areas including electrochemical sensors, catalysis, and energy storage due to their excellent functionality of good permeability to the inner host. The mesoscopic channels, however, pose a problem because their potential applications require mass transport within them, so they are limited by the undesirable and finite structure of mesoscopic channels due to the immense synthetic difficulties. In this study, we demonstrate a facile interfacial assembly strategy for fabricating hybrid electrodes with highly accessible nanochannels on carbon cloth (CC), called macroporous/mesoporous polymer carbon arrays (MMPCA), where the multistage pores size extremely wide from ca. 10 to 250 nm. Owing to these vertically irregular, permeable and multistage channels, electrochemical sensors based on the MMPCA exhibit a low limit of detection (LOD, 0.27 µM) and nice sensitivity (0.545 µA µM -1 cm -2 ) in dopamine (DA) detection. This strategy creates opportunities to controllably tailor the interfacial assembly of multistage mesoporous nanounits on diverse conductive substrate towards versatile applications and underscores the importance of structural alignments for advanced technologies, which could be applied to various fields related to mass transportation and electronic signal transmission.