Porous Carbon Substrate Improving the Sensing Performance of Copper Nanoparticles Toward Glucose

An accurate sensor to rapidly determine the glucose concentration is of significant importance for the human body health, as diabetes has become a very high incidence around the world. In this work, copper nanoparticles accommodated in porous carbon substrates (Cu NP@PC), synthesized by calcinating the filter papers impregnated with copper ions at high temperature, were designed as the electrode active materials for electrochemical sensing of glucose. During the formation of porous carbon, the copper nanoparticles spontaneously accommodated into the formed voids and constituted the half-covered composites. For the electrochemical glucose oxidation, the prepared Cu NP@PC composites exhibit much superior catalytic activity with the current density of 0.31 mA/cm(2) at the potential of 0.55 V in the presence of 0.2 mM glucose. Based on the high electrochemical oxidation activity, the present Cu NP@PC composites also exhibit a superior glucose sensing performance. The sensitivity is determined to be 84.5 μA /(mmol(.)L) with a linear range of 0.01 ~ 1.1 mM and a low detection limit (LOD) of 2.1 μmol/L. Compared to that of non-porous carbon supported copper nanoparticles (Cu NP/C), this can be reasonable by the improved mass transfer and strengthened synergistic effect between copper nanoparticles and porous carbon substrates. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s11671-021-03579-y.