Electrochemical sensors based on composites of porous Fe3O4/C and carbon black for sensitive and rapid detection of propofol

Nowadays, many people are turning to medications that can help them stay calm during surgeries and their daily lives. As an anesthetic that reduces the excitability of nerve cells, propofol can achieve sedation with the advantages of fast onset and short half-life. The development of propofol sensors has tremendous application potential because they can help healthcare professionals dynamically regulate the concentration of propofol in the blood, not only to achieve the painless surgeries that patients want, to maintain the sedation that surgeons desire, but also to prevent the respiratory failure that may occur with a patient's daily sleep aids. In this paper, we prepared Fe3O4/C/CB nanocomposites by doping carbon black on the surface of the pyrolyzed product of MIL-88B. The nanocomposites-modified glassy carbon electrodes were used to detect propofol in phosphate buffer solution. The porous nanocomposites with high electrical conductivity promoted the charge transfer on the electrode surface, improving the performance of the modified electrodes. After optimization, the linear range, the detection limit, and the sensitivity for propofol were 5.0–205 μM, 0.102 μM, and 2.850 μA cm−2 μM−1, respectively. The electrochemical sensing of propofol in a medical propofol emulsion injection and in normal human serum showed that the method was rapid and repeatable.