General approach to MOF-derived core-shell bimetallic oxide nanowires for fast response to glucose oxidation

•A new sensor with bimetallic oxides core-shell structure derived MOF is built.•Self-supporting arrays including CuOx@(Fe2O3, Co3O4, NiO, CuOx, ZnO) are prepared.•Five types of self-supporting sensors exhibit certain glucose oxidation ability. One new type of electrochemical sensors for the effective glucose detection is fabricated based on the use of CuOx@Co3O4 core-shell nanowires on Cu foam as electrocatalysts, which is synthesized through the stepwise process, including anodized nano-sized Cu(OH)2 wires, Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)-wrapped Cu(OH)2 nanowires, and the following calcination. These as-made hierarchical composites exhibit the structural characteristics of CuOx nanowires core and Co3O4 nanoparticles shell calcinated from the terminally attached microporous ZIF-67. This type of glucose sensor compared to pure individual metal oxides exhibits higher sensitivity (27778 μA mM−1 cm-2 in the range from 0.1–1300.0 μM), lower detection limit (36 nM (S/N = 3)) and faster response time (∼1 s), also displays satisfactory selectivity, reproducibility, and long-term storage stability. Meanwhile, it achieves well-pleasing results in the detection of glucose in real human blood serum compared to commercial sensors. In addition, other four types of self-supporting MOF-derived bimetallic oxides core-shell nanowire arrays on Cu foam are also prepared by adopting the similar three-step procedure, including CuOx@Fe2O3, CuOx@NiO, CuOx@CuOx and CuOx@ZnO core-shell nanowires, demonstrating the versatility of this method. These results confirm that our as-made MOF-derived bimetallic oxide based sensor of CuOx@Co3O4 has a great potential application in the development of enzyme-free sensors for monitoring glucose.