One-dimensional nitrogen doped porous carbon nano-array arranged by carbon nanotubes for electrochemical sensing ascorbic acid, dopamine and uric acid simultaneously

Abstract

In this work, one-dimensional nitrogen doped porous carbon nano-arrays arranged by carbon nanotube (1D CNTs@NPC) were first constructed, using a coating technology at room temperature and followed by high temperature carbonization. It was expected that the resulting glassy carbon electrodes modified by 1D CNTs@NPC (CNTs@NPC/GCE) could express different electrochemical responses to ascorbic acid (AA), dopamine (DA), uric acid (UA), by virtue of the synergistic-improved effect between CNTs and NPC. Under the optimized conditions, there were excellent analytical parameters for CNTs@NPC/GCE to detect AA, DA and UA, i.e. a wide linear range of 40–2100 μM for AA, 0.5–49 μM for DA and 3–50 μM for AA with low detection limits of 0.36 μM, 0.02 μmol l−1 and 0.57 μM respectively. Importantly, the proposed CNTs@NPC/GCE was efficiently applied to determine AA, DA and UA in some real samples with high stability, reproducibility and selectivity. This work will offer an efficient potential for diagnosing ascorbic acid, dopamine or uric acid-related diseases on clinical testing in future.