Nanozyme technology as an emerging field has been successfully applied to chemical sensing, biomedicine, and environmental monitoring. It is very significant for the advance of this field to construct nanozymes with high catalytic activity by a simple method and to develop their multifunctional applications. Here, a new type of cobalt-doped carbon dots (Co-CDs) nanozymes was designed using vitamin B12 and citric acid as the precursors. The homogeneous cobalt doping at carbon nuclear led the Co-CDs to show significant peroxidase-like activity resembling natural metalloenzymes. Based on the high affinity of Co-CDs to H2O2 (Km = 0.0598 mM), a colorimetric sensor for glucose detection was constructed by combining Co-CDs with glucose oxidase. On account of the high catalytic activity of nanozymes and the cascade strategy, a good linear relationship was obtained from 0.500 to 200 μM, with a detection limit of 0.145 μM. The biosensor has realized the accurate detection of glucose in human serum samples. Moreover, Co-CDs could specifically catalyze H2O2 in cancer cells to generate a variety of reactive oxygen species, leading to the death of cancer cells, which has useful application potential in tumor catalytic therapy. In this work, the catalytic activity of Co-CDs has been adequately exploited, which extends the application of carbon dots in multiple biotechnologies, including biosensing, disease diagnosis, and treatment.
Keywords: anticancer activity; catalyst; cobalt-doped carbon dots; glucose sensor; peroxidase-like nanozyme.