Phytogenic synthesis of Co3O4 nanorods and its application in biomolecule sensing and antifungal activity

Abstract

An efficient, ease, and environmentally friendly method has been developed using Ocimum tenuiflorum leaf extract as reducing agent to prepare Co3O4 nanorods. The synthesized nanorods have been characterized by using various physicochemical techniques such as XRD, FTIR, TG-DTA, TEM, XPS and evaluated the biological sensing activity of Co3O4/GCE as electrocatalyst against glucose and dopamine etc. Electrochemical measurements reveal that Co3O4/GCE exhibited excellent electrocatalytic activity towards glucose with two different linear counter part, i.e., 200 nM – 110 µM (R2 = 0.9996) & 160 µM – 5.91 mM (R2 = 0.9873). The developed glucose sensor reveals the lowest limit of detection level and sensitivity of glucose is about 50 nM and 1301.39 µAmM–1cm−2, respectively in short response time. The Co3O4/GCE sensor also exhibited electrocatalytic activity towards dopamine with wide response range of 500 nM to 407 µM with the correlation coefficient of R2 = 0.9939 and the sensitivity of Co3O4/GCE calculated to 0.24 µAµM-1cm−2 and the sensor exhibits the detection limit to dopamine around 240 nM. The cobalt oxide nanorods show more potent fungal activity towards the Aspergillus niger and Candida albicans as the standard used.