Single-Atom Pt Boosting Electrochemical Nonenzymatic Glucose Sensing on Ni(OH)₂/N-Doped Graphene

Abstract

Conventional nanomaterials in electrochemical nonenzymatic sensing face huge challenge due to their complex size-, surface-, and composition-dependent catalytic properties and low active site density. In this work, we designed a single-atom Pt supported on Ni(OH)₂ nanoplates/nitrogen-doped graphene (Pt₁/Ni(OH)₂/NG) as the first example for constructing a single-atom catalyst based electrochemical nonenzymatic glucose sensor. The resulting Pt₁/Ni(OH)₂/NG exhibited a low anode peak potential of 0.48 V and high sensitivity of 220.75 μA mM^-1 cm^-2 toward glucose, which are 45 mV lower and 12 times higher than those of Ni(OH)₂, respectively. The catalyst also showed excellent selectivity for several important interferences, short response time of 4.6 s, and high stability over 4 weeks. Experimental and density functional theory (DFT) calculated results reveal that the improved performance of Pt₁/Ni(OH)₂/NG could be attributed to stronger binding strength of glucose on single-atom Pt active centers and their surrounding Ni atoms, combined with fast electron transfer ability by the adding of the highly conductive NG. This research sheds light on the applications of SACs in the field of electrochemical nonenzymatic sensing.