One-step synthesis of 2D@3D hollow Prussian blue analogue as a high-performance bifunctional electrochemical sensor

Abstract

Prussian blue analogues (PBAs) are a family of classic coordination polymers. They have been widely applied in various fields including electrochemical sensors. Cubic nanoparticle structure is their common morphology. It is still a great challenge to design a hollow and two-dimensional (2D) PBA material. Of course, it will be a significant surprise if a hollow cube and 2D sheet can be integrated into one material. In this work, we designed a simple one-step synthetic strategy and resolved the above difficulty, wherein a hollow cubic PBA covered by 2D ultrathin nanosheets was successfully constructed, namely hollow tremella-like PBA (HTPBA). Furthermore, Ni foam (NF) as a substrate was introduced to obtain a self-supporting HTPBA/NF-12 electrode. HTPBA/NF-12, as a bifunctional electrochemical sensor electrode, exhibited distinguished catalytic performance towards glucose and nitrite, including remarkable selectivity, reproducibility, sensitivity for glucose (21 410 μA mM⁻¹ cm⁻²) and nitrite (1248 μA mM⁻¹ cm⁻²), wide linear range of 2–1250 μM and 5–3380 μM, along with low detection limit of 0.056 μM and 0.38 μM, respectively. More importantly, HTPBA/NF-12 electrodes possessed good reusability and practicability even in goat serum. In this study, we developed a simple and effective strategy to fabricate 2D@3D PBA material with excellent electrocatalytic activity and provide a totally new viewpoint in the PBA sensing field.