Electroactive Cu2O nanocubes engineered electrochemical sensor for H2S detection

Wenxiu Gu; Wangwang Zheng; Han Liu; Yuan Zhao

doi:10.1016/j.aca.2021.338216

Electroactive Cu₂O nanocubes engineered electrochemical sensor for H₂S detection

Anal Chim Acta. 2021 Mar 15:1150:338216. doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2021.338216. Epub 2021 Jan 15.

Authors

Wenxiu Gu¹, Wangwang Zheng¹, Han Liu¹, Yuan Zhao²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Biological Colloids, Ministry of Education, International Joint Research Center for Photoresponsive Molecules and Materials, School of Chemical and Material Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu, 214122, China.
² Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Biological Colloids, Ministry of Education, International Joint Research Center for Photoresponsive Molecules and Materials, School of Chemical and Material Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu, 214122, China. Electronic address: zhaoyuan@jiangnan.edu.cn.

PMID: 33583548
DOI: 10.1016/j.aca.2021.338216

Abstract

An electrochemical sensor was proposed for the detection of hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) at room temperature, by using electroactive Cu₂O nanocubes (NCs) as an electrochemical beacon. Electroactive Cu₂O NCs were synthesized on the surface of reduced graphene oxide (rGO)/Fe₃O₄ nanosheets (NSs) due to the good electronic conductivity and well-responded magnetic responses. The fabricated rGO/Fe₃O₄/Cu₂O NSs not only showed electrochemical oxidization peak at -0.1 V from Cu₂O NCs, and could be served as sensitive electrochemical beacon for the simple modification on magnetic electrodes in the applications. The unique redox reaction between Cu₂O NCs and H₂S enabled the transformation of Cu₂O NCs to Cu₉S₈ NCs, resulting in decreased electroxidation responses at -0.1 V. The constructed electrochemical platform had a limit of detection (LOD) of 230 pM and a detection range of 500 pM-100 μM. The simple and cheap electrochemical sensor developed in this paper showed potential application for H₂S detection.

Keywords: Cu(9)S(8) NCs; Detection; Electroactive Cu(2)O NCs; Electrochemical sensor; H(2)S.