Uricase-free on-demand colorimetric biosensing of uric acid enabled by integrated CoP nanosheet arrays as a monolithic peroxidase mimic

In clinical diagnosis, monitoring of uric acid (UA) is generally realized by combining uricase with natural peroxidase. The use of bio-enzymes, however, shadows some highlights of these methods due to their vulnerable activities against environments. Herein, we report a novel biosensor for the natural enzyme-free colorimetric detection of UA by using CoP nanosheet arrays grown on Ni foam (NF) as a monolithic peroxidase mimic. The integrated nanozyme can be put into and taken out from reaction systems conveniently with only tweezers, making it possible for on-demand analysis. As demonstrated, the obtained CoP/NF exhibits outstanding peroxidase-like activity to trigger the oxidation reaction of colorless 3,3′5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) to a blue product (TMBox) mediated by H2O2. It is found that the blue TMBox can be reduced to colorless TMB again by UA selectively, thus the presence of UA in solutions will suppress the color reaction of TMB. Based on this principle, an uricase-free biosensor is developed for the photometric determination of UA, providing a wide detection range of 1–200 μM and a limit of detection down to 1.0 μM. In addition, the fabricated biosensor can be applied for measuring UA in clinical samples with merits of simple operation and good reliability, exhibiting its great promise in clinical diagnosis.