Glucose sensing characterization of non-enzymatic nickel film and nickel foam electrodes in sodium hydroxide solution

Abstract

Recently, a non-enzymatic glucose sensor has gained a lot attention, because it is re-useable, fast and simple, as opposed to traditional enzymatic glucose sensor. In this work, two types of electrodes, including electroplated Ni film and Ni foam, were used as sensing electrodes for a non-enzymatic glucose sensor. The studied sensing properties of the Ni film and Ni foam included glucose-detecting sensitivity, selectivity, and detection limit. For the sensitivity and selectivity analysis, the sensing electrodes, with geometrical working area of 1 and 2 cm2 for Ni foam and Ni film respectively, were submerged in a 1M NaOH solution, connected as a working electrode with Ag/AgCl and Pt as a reference and counter electrodes, respectively. Amperometric scanning measurement was used for the sensitivity and selectivity analysis. Sensitivity measurement was tested by dropping glucose solutions into 1M NaOH solution and recording the amperometric response of these sensor under varying sugar contents. The glucose-detection sensitivities are 1.1048 and 6.4228 mA mM-1 cm-2 for Ni plate and Ni foam, respectively. Limit of detection (LOD) of Ni film and Ni foam are 0.0072 and 0.0144 mM, respectively. The selectivity of electrodes were tested by dropping 3 types of disturbing agents: Quinine, Acetic acid and NaCl. The disturbing agents showed no effect on the current density signal during the amperometric measurement for both of the Ni plate and Ni foam electrodes.