An electrochemical sensor based on boron/nitrogen co-doped honeycomb-like porous carbon encapsulation molybdenum trioxides for the simultaneous detection of xanthine, uric acid and dopamine

Xanthine (XA), uric acid (UA) and dopamine (DA) play vital roles in physiological function of organisms, which have attracted much attention. Herein, a novel sensor for the simultaneous detection of XA, UA and DA was prepared based on the highly dispersed molybdenum trioxides (MoO3) nanoparticles anchored on boron/ni-trogen co-doped hierarchically honeycomb-like porous carbon (MoO3 @B/N-PC) through an efficient in-situ hydrothermal and pyrocarbonization strategy. Such newly developed MoO3 @B/N-PC sensor provided the unique hierarchical pore structure with rich active centers that led to promote the adsorption and diffusion of target molecules onto the active surface, enabling better electrochemical detection performance. With the vol-tammetric techniques, the MoO3 @B/N-PC sensor is capable to synchronous detection XA, UA and DA in the wide linear ranges 0.082 -191.4 mu M for XA, 0.086 -102.5 mu M for UA, and 0.079 -104.1 mu M for DA, along with low limits of detection 0.075 mu M (XA), 0.078 mu M (UA), and 0.069 mu M (DA), respectively. Meanwhile, the present MoO3 @B/N-PC sensor exhibited excellent anti-interference ability in the presence of various common interfering chemicals, superb repeatability (95.7% for XA, 97.6% for UA, 98.1% for DA) and good reproducibility (94.8% for XA, 95.8% for UA and 96.2% for DA). Furthermore, the satisfactory recoveries of target molecules obtained from the spiked real samples, suggesting its feasibility for practical application.