Simplistic one-pot synthesis of an inorganic–organic cubic caged material: a new interface for detecting toxic bisphenol-A electrochemically

Abstract

Qualitative determination of bisphenol A (BPA) is imperative as it has an endocrine-disrupting nature in humans. The main objective of the current work is to fabricate an efficient chemical modifier for the electrochemical determination of BPA. Though various studies have been reported in sensing of BPA electrochemically, the exploration of cage-like POSS (polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane)-based silica chemical modifiers has not been reported so far. Due to their high surface area, fast electron transfer, and functionalities, these POSS based silica materials can act as an efficient chemical modifier over a glassy carbon (GC) surface, POSS@GCE. In this work, three different POSS based silica materials were used which are functionalized using tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS), (3-mercaptopropyl)trimethoxysilane (MPTMS), and vinyltrimethoxysilane (VTES) to obtain POSS-OH, POSS-SH, and POSS-vinyl, respectively. These silica materials were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, and ¹H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) techniques were employed for the electrochemical studies. Under the optimized conditions, while comparing these three materials’ electrochemical response, POSS-vinyl showed higher sensitivity with a lower detection range of 0.749–7.49 μM in DPV analysis followed by POSS-SH and POSS-OH. Scan rate studies done with CV showed that the determination of BPA with the aforementioned chemical modifiers was a completely diffusion-controlled process.