Modification of glassy carbon electrode with trigona carbon nanopetals/ferrocene/gold nanoparticles nanocomposite for electrochemical detection of dopamine

Abstract

In this study, we have synthesized a composite using carbon material derived from bio-inspired onion peel morphology like 2D trigona carbon nano petals (TCP) incorporated with ferrocene (FC). The FC is added with the purpose of improving the electrochemical behaviour of TCP. Further, to increase the number of electrochemically active sites in the composite, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were again decorated on TCP/FC, and thus derived electrochemically active TCP/FC/AuNPs nanocomposite. We have characterized the properties and surface morphology of this nanocomposite through spectroscopic and microscopic techniques. Further, using this nanocomposite for surface modification of glassy carbon electrode, we have developed an efficient GCE-TCP/FC/AuNPs electrode. The electrochemical efficiency of this electrode has been inspected through sensing and quantification of pharmaceutically valuable biomolecule dopamine through CV, DPV and square wave voltammetry techniques. The observed CV results reveals that the newly designed GCE-TCP/FC/AuNPs electrode has an ability to detect the dopamine with wide linear range of concentration from 5.96 × 10^-6 to 0.1 × 10^-4 M and its limit of detection was 2.9 × 10^-6 M under 0.1 M phosphate buffer medium (pH 7.0). Therefore, it is important to mention here that this newly fabricated electrode can very well be used for real time sample analysis for sensing and detection of dopamine as it plays a key role in the neurotransmission and causes several diseases.