Copper oxide nanocolumns for high-sensitive non-enzymatic glucose sensing

Abstract

This paper presents a facile method to fabricate nanostructured copper-oxide (Cu2O/CuO) electrodes with columnar morphology for non-enzymatic glucose sensing. The electrodes were fabricated using a two-step method; first by producing Cu nanostructures through glancing angle deposition (GLAD), followed by a ther-mal annealing process at various temperatures. The nanostructures were characterized by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy to evaluate their structural and morphological properties. The optical properties of the electrodes were also investigated by VIS/NIR spectroscopy. Electrochemical characterization revealed that Cu2O outperformed other copper-based nanostructures, with the best sensitivity of 1394 mu Acm-2 mM-1 and the lowest limit of detection (LOD) of 0.052 mu M. The superior sensor also exhibits two broad linear ranges of 0.01-2 mM and 2-5 mM at the optimized potential of 0.6 V. The Cu2O electrodes demonstrate the merits of repro-ducibility, selectivity, fast response time, and high accuracy in measuring glucose levels in real blood serum samples.