General synthesis of hierarchical sheet/plate-like M-BDC (M = Cu, Mn, Ni, and Zr) metal–organic frameworks for electrochemical non-enzymatic glucose sensing

Two-dimensional metal–organic frameworks (2D MOFs) are an attractive platform to develop new kinds of catalysts because of their structural tunability and large specific surface area that exposes numerous active sites. In this work, we report a general method to synthesize benzene dicarboxylic acid (BDC)-based MOFs with hierarchical 3D morphologies composed of 2D nanosheets or nanoplates. In our proposed strategy, acetonitrile helps solvate the metal ions in solution and affects the morphology, while polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) serves as a shape-control agent to assist in the nucleation and growth of MOF nanosheets. PVP also acts as a depletion agent to drive the assembly of the hierarchical sheet/plate-like M-BDC under solvothermal conditions. Further, we also demonstrate the flexibility of the proposed method using numerous coordinating metal ions (M = Cu, Mn, Ni, and Zr). The potential of these MOFs for electrochemical glucose sensing is examined using the hierarchical sheet-like Ni-BDC MOF as the optimum sample. It drives the electrocatalytic oxidation of glucose over a wide range (0.01 mM to 0.8 mM) with high sensitivity (635.9 μA mM(−1) cm(−2)) in the absence of modification with carbon or the use of conductive substrates. It also demonstrates good selectivity with low limit of detection (LoD = 6.68 μM; signal/noise = 3), and fast response time (<5 s).