Graphene-Based Flexible Sensors for Simultaneous Detection of Ascorbic Acid, Dopamine, and Uric Acid.

Shuaishuai Meng,Jie Yu,Li Wang,Xixi Ji,Tingting Zheng,Huanhuan Feng,Yaming Liu,Yun Chen

doi:10.3389/fbioe.2021.726071

Abstract

Many diseases are closely related to abnormal concentrations of ascorbic acid (AA), dopamine (DA), and uric acid (UA). Therefore, the detection of these small molecules is significant for monitoring life metabolism and healthy states. Electrochemical detection has been widely used to detect small molecules due to its good selectivity, high sensitivity, and good economics. Fabrication and application are two sides of the coin, and we cannot give up one for the other. Graphene (GN) is a very suitable material for electrochemical sensing due to its excellent catalytic performance and large specific surface area. It possesses many excellent properties but cannot hold itself alone due to its nanoscale thickness. Herein, we have fabricated three-dimensional (3D) GN nanosheets (GNSs) on flexible carbon cloth (CC) by thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The GNSs/CC can successfully detect AA, DA, and UA simultaneously. We find that these GNSs/CC sensors show good performance with 7 h CVD modification. The linear ranges of AA, DA, and UA are 0.02–0.1, 0.0005–0.02, and 0.0005–0.02 mM, respectively. The detection sensitivity rates of AA, DA, and UA are 5,470, 60,500, and 64,000 μA mM−1 cm−2, respectively. Our GNSs/CC flexible sensors can be successfully applied in the human serum for UA detection. The result matches with commercial sensors very well.

Highlights

Clinical medicine research has found that chronic diseases such as scurvy, Parkinson’s disease, and gout are highly correlated with abnormal concentrations of ascorbic acid (AA), dopamine (DA), and uric acid (UA) (Masliah et al, 2000; Sansuk et al, 2013; Du et al, 2014; Liao et al, 2014)
To fabricate our GN nanosheets (GNSs)/carbon cloth (CC) flexible sensor (Figure 1), we put a certain specification of CC into a tube furnace, introduced the protective gas argon (Ar) at a rate of 200 sccm, and heated the tube furnace to 1,100 °C to complete the carbonization of the CC fiber in Ar atmosphere
The results show that the resistance of the GNSs/ CC flexible sensor remains stable during and after bending for 100 times, indicating that our sensor has the advantages of flexibility and performance stability

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Clinical medicine research has found that chronic diseases such as scurvy, Parkinson’s disease, and gout are highly correlated with abnormal concentrations of ascorbic acid (AA), dopamine (DA), and uric acid (UA) (Masliah et al, 2000; Sansuk et al, 2013; Du et al, 2014; Liao et al, 2014). Lu et al, 2020), and high-performance liquid chromatography (Mesbah et al, 1989; Ianni et al, 2019; Qi et al, 2020) These methods require a long detection cycle and professional operation and are of high cost, which limit their efficient detection of these small biological molecules. As these three substances all contain special functional groups, they will be oxidized at a certain potential and exhibit electrochemical activity, which can be measured by current. This work provides a simple and efficient tool for the simultaneous detection of multiple biochemical signals

MATERIALS AND METHODS

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT