MOF-derived porous nitrogen and phosphorus codoped carbon nanosheets: An emerging material for constructing robust electrochemical sensing platform

Synthesizing novel MOFs derived carbon-based materials and investigating their sensing application own important scientific significance. In this work, Zn-MOF (ZIF-8) derived porous carbon with different dimension and atoms doping were facilely prepared via simple MOFs routes. Compared with the widely studied ZIF-8 derived three-dimensional porous N-doped carbon polyhedron frames (N-doped CPF), the two-dimensional porous N-doped carbon nanosheets (N-doped CNS) displayed remarkably enhanced electrochemical sensing performance for its stronger electron transfer ability. On the basis of N-doped carbon materials, the introduction of heteroatom P was also confirmed to be able to further boost their electrochemical activity for the promoted electrochemically active specific surface and interface interaction with the target molecules. As a result, ZIF-8 nanosheets derived N, P-codoped CNS was demonstrated to be qualified for the sensitive detection of various target analytes, including biological molecules (8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine and guanine), food additive (sunset yellow) and organic pesticide (benomyl). The linear response ranges were 2.5–1000 nM for 8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine, 50–3500 nM for guanine, 5.0–2000 nM for sunset yellow and 25–2000 nM for benomyl. Besides, their detection limits were as low as 0.85 nM, 14.50 nM, 2.15 nM and 7.50 nM with sensitivity of 950.00 µA μM−1 cm−2, 52.43 µA μM−1 cm−2, 527.14 µA μM−1 cm−2 and 381.43 µA μM−1 cm−2 for 8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine, guanine, sunset yellow and benomyl, respectively. Considering the huge application potential of two-dimensional carbon nanosheets, it is believed that the newly synthesized N, P-codoped CNS can play a much greater role for other applications.