Enhanced Electrochemical Sensing Based on Perylenetetracarboxylic Acid Functionalized Carbon Nanohorns Hybrids Modified Electrode

Presently, there are only few reports for electrochemical sensing based on carbon nanohorns (CNHs), one of the major obstacles is the poor dispersibility of CNHs in conventional solvents. Herein, perylenetetracarboxylic acid (PTCA) molecule was used to functionalize CNHs surface via π-π stacking interactions to form a novel naohybrid PTCA-CNHs. Interesting, the PTCA-CNHs shows excellent dispersibility in various solvent. For demonstrating electrochemical sensing performance of the PTCA-CNHs nanohybrids, the obtained nanohybrids were used to modify glassy carbon electrode (GCE) to measure the electrochemical behaviors of three harmful analytes (α-naphthalenamine, bisphenol A and rhodamine B). The results show that the peak currents of three analytes at PTCA-CNHs/GCE are much higher than those at CNHs/GCE and bare GCE. And the PTCA-CNHs/GCE has a linear response range of 0.01-2.3 μM with a detection limit of 0.004 μM for bisphenol A detection.