Rational Design of Cu@Cu 2 O Nanospheres Anchored B, N Co-doped Mesoporous Carbon: A Sustainable Electrocatalyst To Assay Eminent Neurotransmitters Acetylcholine and Dopamine

Exploring rapid, highly sensitive, cost-effective assay platforms to diagnose neurotransmitters is crucial in clinical biology. We propose a [email protected] 2 O nanospheres embedded B and N co-doped mesoporous carbon (BNDC) nanoelectrocatalyst to assay dopamine (DA) and acetylcholine (ACh). The [email protected] 2 O-BNDC catalyst has been prepared through a single step polymerization, followed by a carbonization. TEM results revealed that [email protected] 2 O nanoparticles appeared as nanospheres (size = 30 ± 5) entrapped on the mesoporous BNDC. Further, the catalyst possesses a specific surface area of 1025 m 2 g –1 along with a pore size of 4 nm offers enormous active surface area for electrochemical sensing applications. The [email protected] 2 O-BNDC catalyst was employed in electrochemical sensing of DA and ACh in a working range of 0.004–542 μM and 0.3–2602 μM, and detection limits of 0.5 nM and 17 nM, respectively. The practicality of the developed sensor has been assessed via DA (pH 7) and ACh (0.1 M NaOH) spiked in human blood serum samples, and satisfactory recovery was obtained. On top of this, the proposed synthetic protocol of the catalyst can be a versatile route to achieve heteroatom doped carbon nanomaterials possessing an enormous surface area and desirable morphology.