Glycine post-synthetic modification of MIL-53(Fe) metal–organic framework with enhanced and stable peroxidase-like activity for sensitive glucose biosensing

A facile and rapid post-synthetic strategy was proposed to prepare a glycine functionalized MIL-53(Fe), namely glycine-MIL-53(Fe), by a simple mixing of water dispersible MIL-53(Fe) and glycine. The FT-IR, SEM, XRD and zeta potential were used to characterize the glycine-MIL-53(Fe). The result showed that glycine post-synthetic modification of MIL-53(Fe) did not change in the morphology and crystal structure of MIL-53(Fe). Interestingly, compared with MIL-53(Fe), the glycine-MIL-53(Fe) exhibits an enhanced peroxidase-like activity, which could catalyze the oxidation of TMB by H2O2 to produce an intensive color reaction. Kinetic analysis indicated that the Km of glycine-MIL-53(Fe) for TMB was one-tenth of that of MIL-53(Fe). The glycine-MIL-53(Fe) as peroxidase mimetic displays better stability under alkaline or acidic conditions than MIL-53(Fe). The good performance of glycine-MIL-53(Fe) over MIL-53(Fe) may be attributed to the increase of affinity between TMB and the glycine-MIL-53(Fe). With these characteristics, a simple and sensitive method was developed for the detection of H2O2 and glucose. The linear detection range for H2O2 is 0.10-10μM with a detection limit of 49nM, and glucose could be linearly detected in the range from 0.25 to 10μM with a detection limit of 0.13μM. The proposed method was successfully used for glucose detection in human serum samples.