High-performance enzyme-free glucose and hydrogen peroxide sensors based on bimetallic AuCu nanoparticles coupled with multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Interest in designing and manufacturing non-enzymatic biosensors is growing which stimulates the increased research efforts to explore innovative nanocomposites with highly catalytic activity. Here, the development of high-performance non-enzymatic glucose and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) sensors based on bimetallic AuCu nanoparticles coupled with multi-walled carbon nanotubes ([email protected]) was achieved in this work. They were investigated by the cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and chronoamperometry (CA) methods separately. Benefiting from the synergistic effects of [email protected], the proposed biosensors exhibited excellent performance such as low detection limits (1.3 nM for glucose, 0.1 nM for H2O2), broad linear ranges (8 nM-60 mM for glucose, 1 nM-4 mM for H2O2) and high sensitivities (362.3 μA·mM−1·cm−2 for glucose, 1335 μA·mM−1·cm−2 for H2O2). Besides, the [email protected] based electrodes provided excellent stability, repeatability and reproducibility. Based on the outstanding performance, they exhibited good reliability and accuracy in the detection of glucose in goat serum samples and real-time monitoring of H2O2 released by living cells. The present work suggests that the fabricated biosensor holds great potential for non-enzymatic glucose determination and real-time quantitative detection of H2O2 in biomedical applications.