An ultrasensitive electrochemical DNA biosensor based on a copper oxide nanowires/single-walled carbon nanotubes nanocomposite

A novel and sensitive electrochemical biosensor based on hybrid nanocomposite consisting of copper oxide nanowires (CuO NWs) and carboxyl-functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs-COOH) was first developed for the detection of the specific-sequence target DNA. This schematic represents the fabrication procedure of our DNA biosensor. •An ultrasensitive DNA electrochemical biosensor was developed.•CuO NWs entangled with the SWCNTs formed a mesh structure with good conductivity.•It is the first time use of CuONWs-SWCNTs hybrid nanocomposite for DNA detection.•The biosensor is simple, selective, stable, and sensitive.•The biosensor has great potential for use in analysis of real samples. Here, we developed a novel and sensitive electrochemical biosensor to detect specific-sequence target DNA. The biosensor was based on a hybrid nanocomposite consisting of copper oxide nanowires (CuO NWs) and carboxyl-functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs-COOH). The resulting CuO NWs/SWCNTs layers exhibited a good differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) current response for the target DNA sequences, which we attributed to the properties of CuO NWs and SWCNTs. CuO NWs and SWCNTs hybrid composites with highly conductive and biocompatible nanostructure were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and cyclic voltammetry (CV). Immobilization of the probe DNA on the electrode surface was largely improved due to the unique synergetic effect of CuO NWs and SWCNTs. DPV was applied to monitor the DNA hybridization event, using adriamycin as an electrochemical indicator. Under optimal conditions, the peak currents of adriamycin were linear with the logarithm of target DNA concentrations (ranging from 1.0×10−14 to 1.0×10−8M), with a detection limit of 3.5×10−15M (signal/noise ratio of 3). The biosensor also showed high selectivity to single-base mismatched target DNA. Compared with other electrochemical DNA biosensors, we showed that the proposed biosensor is simple to implement, with good stability and high sensitivity.