Gold nanodendrites enriched with gold nanoclusters on carbon-fiber as flexible acetaminophen sensor for clinical diagnostics

Abstract

In this work, we demonstrate a flexible acetaminophen (APAP) microsensor based on gold dendrites decorated with gold nanoclusters on flexible carbon fiber (AuDS-AuNC|FCF) microelectrodes. The AuDS-AuNC|FCF microelectrodes are fabricated with a facile and single-step electrochemical strategy for electrocatalytic oxidation and sensing acetaminophen in a 0.1 M phosphate buffer (PB) (pH ∼7.4) solution. The as-developed AuDS-AuNC|FCF microsensors demonstrate excellent electrocatalytic oxidation of acetaminophen with a low oxidation potential of ∼0.54 V (vs. Ag/AgCl) and high catalytic current of ∼1.33 μA. This is because they have a lot of active sites, a large quantity of electrochemical active surface area (ECSA), and gold nanoclusters that are spread out homogeneously. The AuDS-AuNC|FCF microsensors exhibit fast sensing response time of ∼5.0 s, low experimental detection limit of ∼5.0 nM, high sensitivity of ∼0.375 ± 0.017 mA μM−1 cm−2 with a broad linear range of 5.0 nm–500.0 mM, good reproducibility, and possessed a robust anti-interference ability against sensing acetaminophen in the presence of potential interferences such as ascorbic acid, uric acid, adenine, guanine, glucose, etc. Notably, the present microsensor platform based on AuDS-AuNC|FCF microelectrodes is successfully tested for sensing acetaminophen in practical human serum samples, demonstrating its practicability in clinical diagnostics.