Isomorphic MOF-derived porous carbon materials as electrochemical sensor for simultaneous determination of hydroquinone and catechol

Abstract

It is needed to speed up the development of a sensitive detection platform for simultaneous determination of dihydroxybenzene isomers with harmful properties. Here, two isomorphic Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) [Zn(Trz)(R-BDC)1/2] (FJU-40-R, R = H or NH2; Trz = 1,2,4-Triazole; H-BDC = terephthalic acid) were selected to derive two N-doping porous carbon (NPC) materials. Further, a strategy for constructing electrochemical sensors for simultaneous determination of hydroquinone (HQ) and catechol (CT) was proposed by the MOF-derived NPC modifying glass carbon electrode (GCE). It was found that HQ and CT had good responses on NPC-FJU-40-H/GCE, but had no obvious responses on NPC-FJU-40-NH2/GCE. NPC-FJU-40-H/GCE displayed excellent reproducibility, stability, and anti-interference. Under the optimal conditions, the linear ranges of HQ and CT on NPC-FJU-40-H/GCE were 1 ~ 70 µmol L−1 and 1 ~ 100 µmol L−1 with the detection limits of 0.18 µmol L−1 for HQ and 0.31 µmol L−1 for CT, respectively. Although the porous carbon (PC) derived from MOFs has been applied in electrochemical sensing, the effect of the ligand functional groups of isomorphic MOFs on the electrochemical properties of the derived PC materials is still lack of relevant research. Our research provided an idea that the electrocatalysis properties of MOF-derived porous carbon materials could be tuned by changing the functional groups in ligands of isomorphic MOFs in electrochemical sensing field. A feasible strategy was proposed by changing the ligands of the two isomorphic MOFs (FJU-40-H and FJU-40-NH2) to tune the electrocatalysis properties of MOF-derived N-doped porous carbon materials for the simultaneous determination of dihydroxybenzene isomer.