In situ reduction of the Cu/Cu2O/carbon spheres composite for enzymaticless glucose sensors

The Cu/Cu2O nanoclusters deposited carbon spheres have been synthesized through a layer by layer assembly method and subsequently in situ self reduction process, during which the deposited CuO served as the precursor of Cu/Cu2O nanoclusters and carbon sphere as the reducing agent and high specific surface substrate. XRD, SEM and TEM were employed to characterize the crystal structure and morphology of the as-prepared samples. The results showed that the Cu/Cu2O nanoclusters are homogeneously anchored onto the carbon spheres and the phase composition can be changed by altering the numbers of the assembly layers. The double shelled Cu/Cu2O/CSs showed remarkable electrocatalytic activity toward glucose oxidation including two linear range (10–690μM and 1190–3690μM) with high selectivity of 63.8 and 22.6μAmM−1cm−2 respectively, as well as good stability and repeatability. More importantly, the interference from the commonly interfering species such as l-valine, urea, l-proline, NaCl and l-lysine can be effectively avoided. All these results indicated this novel nanostructured material might be a promising candidate for non-enzymatic glucose sensors.