N, S dual doped mesoporous carbon assisted simultaneous electrochemical assay of emerging water contaminant hydroquinone and catechol

Heteroatom doped mesoporous carbon materials are promising catalysts for the electrochemical sensing application. Herein, we report highly efficient dual heteroatom-doped hexagonal mesoporous carbon (MC) derived from Santa Barbara Amorphous-15 (SBA-15) hard template for the detection of phenolic isomers. The synthesis involves dopamine hydrochloride (DA)/thiophene complex, which helps to attain perfectly retained N and S dual doped mesoporous carbon (NS-MC) framework. NS-MC exhibits higher surface area (951 m2 g−1) as well as higher pore volume (0.12 cm3 g−1) with huge graphitic, pyridinic and thiophenic defective sites which facilitates the well-resolved simultaneous electrochemical detection of phenolic isomers hydroquinone (HQ) and catechol (CC). Our results demonstrate that as-synthesized NS-MC material had a LOD of 0.63 μM and 0.29 μM for HQ and CC, respectively. From the calibration curve, sensitivities of proposed sensor were found to be 9.44, 2.71 μA μM−1 cm−2 and 20.80, 10.02 μA μM−1 cm−2 for HQ and CC, respectively with good linear ranges of 10–45 μM and 45–115 μM for HQ; 2–16 μM and 16–40 μM for CC. The NS-MC modified electrode exhibited good selectivity over various possible interferences. The present investigation reveals that the proposed NS-MC material is a promising metal-free catalyst which boosted to electrochemically detect both HQ and CC, present in the municipal tap as well as natural river stream water samples.