One-pot synthesis of highly dispersed PtAu nanoparticles–CTAB–graphene nanocomposites for nonenzyme hydrogen peroxide sensor

Abstract

A simple and efficient approach was developed to fabricate an amperometric sensor for hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) determination based on one-pot synthesis of highly dispersed PtAu nanoparticles–CTAB–graphene nanocomposites. In this study, graphene oxide was first functionalized with a cationic surfactant, cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB); then PtAu nanoparticles (NPs) were deposited on graphene (GR) via a simple chemical co-reduction method. A large amounts of highly dispersed bimetallic PtAu nanoparticles could be well loaded on the surface of the graphene, as revealed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). In addition, PtAuNPs–CTAB–GR nanocomposites were also characterized by electrochemical methods including cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The experimental results demonstrated that constructed sensor exhibited good catalytic activity toward H2O2, and obtained a wide linear range from 5.0×10−9 to 4.8×10−6mol/L with a limit of detection (LOD) of 1.7×10−9mol/L (S/N=3). Moreover, it could also be applied to real samples analysis. The excellent performance of this H2O2 sensor could be ascribed to graphene being used as effective load matrix for the deposition of PtAuNPs and synergistic effect of bimetallic PtAuNPs and graphene nanomaterials.