BIOMATERIALS
Hierarchical CuCo
2
O
4
/C microspheres assembled
with nanoparticle-stacked nanosheets for sensitive
non-enzymatic glucose detection
Haoyong Yin
1,
*
, Jiajie Zhu
1
, Junli Chen
1
, Jianying Gong
1
, and Qiulin Nie
1,
*
1
College of Materials & Environmental Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou 310018, People’s Republic of China
Received: 4 February 2018
Accepted: 29 May 2018
Published online:
6 June 2018
Ó
Springer Science+Business
Media, LLC, part of Springer
Nature 2018
ABSTRACT
The hierarchical CuCo
2
O
4
/C microspheres have been fabricated via a two-step
method involving hydrothermal and calcination processes. SEM, TEM, HRTEM,
XRD and XPS were used to characterize the morphology, structure, and com-
position of the materials. The CuCo
2
O
4
/C microspheres have a hierarchically
flower-like structure composed of nanoparticles-stacked nanosheets. Moreover,
the as-prepared double-metal oxide hierarchical microsphere composites exhibit
greatly improved electrochemical performance than that of pure CuCo
2
O
4
,
owing to the synergistic effect of CuCo
2
O
4
and carbon spheres. The CuCo
2
O
4
/C
5:1 modified electrode exhibited high sensitivity of 707.71 lAmM
-1
cm
-2
in a
wide linear range from 5 to 8000 lM with detection limit of about 1.5 lM. The
outstanding glucose sensing performance of CuCo
2
O
4
/C 5:1 demonstrated that
this kind of spinel bimetallic oxides composites can be favorable candidates for
the development of non-enzymatic sensor.
Introduction
With the urgent demands in accurate and reliable
glucose detection in clinical diagnosis and food
industries, enzymatic glucose sensors have been
greatly developed due to their outstanding selectivity
and sensitivity [1–4]. Although considerable pro-
gresses have been achieved on developing enzyme
based glucose sensors, there are still some defects
such as high cost, complicated immobilization pro-
cedures, high dependency to external environment
and low stability of enzyme [2, 5, 6], hindering them
further application. Therefore, it is highly desirable to
develop enzyme-free glucose sensor with high
activity and excellent stability for catalyzing glucose
oxidation.
It has been demonstrated that nanostructured
transition metal oxides such as NiO [7], Co
3
O
4
[8] and
CuO [9] can be used to construct non-enzymatic
electrochemical glucose sensors as they can function
as efficient catalysts for the electrocatalytic oxidation
of glucose resulting from the redox couple of Cu
2?
/
Cu
3?
,Co
2?
/Co
3?
and Ni
2?/
Ni
3?
ions in alkaline
medium. In addition, the ternary transition metal
oxides such as CuCo
2
O
4
[10] and NiCo
2
O
4
[11, 12]
have aroused more attention due to their higher
Address correspondence to E-mail: yhy@hdu.edu.cn; ny136@hdu.edu.cn
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-2522-y
J Mater Sci (2018) 53:11951–11961
Biomaterials
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