Preparation of a recyclable composite aerogel with controllable peroxidase-like activity for on-site and visual analysis of the dihydroxybenzene isomers

Abstract

Colorimetric detection methods have been attracted and preferred for analytes assessment. Although simple and highly efficient colorimetric strategies based on nanozymes have been developed, there remain inherent problems of intrinsic color interference for accurate analysis and erratic activity to lose controllable, recyclable, and sensitive efficacies. Herein, we have prepared a novel composite aerogel named PACO that is rationally assembled by the poly (vinyl alcohol) aerogel (PVA aerogel) and copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs) to address these challenges. PACO has been proved to exhibit the controllable peroxidase (POD)-like activity through separating the solid PACO from the aqueous solutions. Meanwhile, PACO can avoid intrinsic color interferences and provide more accurate detection performance for naked-eye discrimination. Furthermore, PACO shows the recyclable and long lifetime performances for sensitive detection of water pollutants including hydroquinone (HQ) and catechol (CC) with the LOD of 0.084 μM and 0.101 μM, respectively. Finally, we have constructed a smartphone-based colorimetric detection platform to realize the on-site and visualanalysis of water pollutants in real water samples. Overall, PACO achieves the advanced detection performances to exhibit great potential in nanozymes based sensing method development and colorimetric-related analytical research.