High-Performance Non-enzymatic Glucose Sensors Based on CoNiCu Alloy Nanotubes Arrays Prepared by Electrodeposition

Xuewen Gong,Bo Wang,Guanyu Chen,Faqiang Zhang,Zhifu Liu,Yongxiang Li,Yan Gu

doi:10.3389/fmats.2019.00003

Abstract

Transition metal alloys are good candidate electrodes for non-enzymatic glucose sensors due to their low cost and high performance. In this work, we reported the controllable electrodeposition of CoNiCu alloy nanotubes electrodes using anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) as template. Uniform CoNiCu alloy arrays of nanotubes about 2 μm in length and 280 nm in diameter were obtained by optimizing the electrodeposition parameters. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) measurements indicated that the as-prepared alloy nanotubes arrays are composed of 64.7 wt% Co-19.4 wt% Ni-15.9 wt% Cu. Non-enzymatic glucose sensing measurements indicated that the CoNiCu nanotubes arrays possessed a low detection limit of 0.5 μM, a high sensitivity of 791 μA mM −1 cm −2 from 50 to 1,551 μM and 322 μA mM −1 cm −2 from 1,551 to 4,050 μM. Besides, they showed high reliability with the capacity of anti-jamming. Tafel plots showed that alloying brought higher exchange current density and faster reaction speed. The high performance should be due to the synergistic effect of Co, Ni, and Cu metal elements and high surface area of nanotubes arrays.

Highlights

With the increasing demand in medical, food, and pharmaceutical industry, more attention has been paid to develop glucose sensors with high sensitivity, high stability, and low price (Yoo and Lee, 2010; Tian et al, 2014; Galant et al, 2015)
Template-based electrochemical deposition is a wellaccepted process to synthesize nanostructures, the morphology and component of the products could be largely affected by the deposition parameters like applied voltage and deposition time because of the diversity of electrochemical properties of different elements
When the deposition voltage increases to −1.2 V, nanotubes arrays can be obtained in half hour (Figure 1G)

Summary

Introduction

With the increasing demand in medical, food, and pharmaceutical industry, more attention has been paid to develop glucose sensors with high sensitivity, high stability, and low price (Yoo and Lee, 2010; Tian et al, 2014; Galant et al, 2015). The nanotubes arrays were used for glucose test in the 0.1 M NaOH solution with a different concentration of glucose and 0.4 V was chosen as the working potential for the amperometric performance test. We tuned the electrodeposition voltage and time to obtain high-quality alloy nanotubes arrays.

Results

Conclusion