Copper phthalocyanine-borophene nanocomposite-based non-enzymatic electrochemical urea biosensor

Abstract

Highly sensitive detection of urea is important and necessary in a wide variety of areas such as clinical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and food safety applications. Herein, we demonstrated the fabrication of the sonochemical synthesized copper phthalocyanine (CuPc)-borophene nanocomposites-based non-enzymatic electrochemical biosensor for the urea detection at room temperature. The prepared CuPc, borophene, and CuPc-borophene nanocomposite were characterized using different techniques such as scanning electron microscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy. With the surface and chemical advantages of CuPc-borophene nanocomposite, urea detection performances of the CuPc-borophene nanocomposite-based biosensors exhibited a high selectivity in many matrices such as glucose, fructose, lactose, and maltose, even in highly complex isotonic solutions containing competitive ions at room temperature. CuPc-borophene nanocomposite-based sensor exhibited higher sensitivity of 10.43 mu A/mMcm(2) against (250-1000) mu M with a detection limit of 0.05 mu M in voltammetric cycle of 60 s due to high charge transport advantages of borophene additive. Experimental results revealed that the CuPc-borophene nanocomposite-based non-enzymatic electrochemical biosensor was a sensitive, stable, rapid, portable, and low-cost. Furthermore, the biosensor is a promising candidate for urea electrochemical analysis in a complex aqueous medium for biomedical applications.