Surface morphology-controllable magnetic covalent organic frameworks: A novel electrocatalyst for simultaneously high-performance detection of p-nitrophenol and o-nitrophenol

Abstract

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) have attracted tremendous interest due to their promising applications, including electrocatalysis originating from their unique structural features. However, it remains a challenge to prepare COFs for p-nitrophenol (PNP) and o-nitrophenol (ONP) electrocatalysis because it is quite difficult to manipulate their dimension, composition, and morphology with abundant active sites. Here, a facile ambient temperature synthesis of unique Fe3O4-based magnetic COFs nanosphere (Fe3O4@AT-COFs) with different surface morphologic structure is reported, which exhibits higher surface area, good water dispersity, long-term stability, excellent electrical conductivity and pre-concentration effect. The prepared Fe3O4@AT-COF-based electrochemical sensor is then directly employed for the simultaneous detection of PNP and ONP with a wide linear detection range of 10–3000 μM and low detection limits (LOD) of 0.2361 μM and 0.6568 μM, respectively. Meanwhile, the Fe3O4@AT-COF can be also well-applied in lake and tap water for monitoring PNP and ONP with outstanding sensitivity and reliability, which is expect to be a high-efficient electrocatalyst with great promise for signal amplification of electrochemical sensing.