Rational Design of Cu@Cu2O 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 Cu@Cu2O nanospheres embedded B and N co-doped mesoporous carbon (BNDC) nanoelectrocatalyst to assay dopamine (DA) and acetylcholine (ACh). The Cu@Cu2O-BNDC catalyst has been prepared through a single step polymerization, followed by a carbonization. TEM results revealed that Cu@Cu2O nano-particles 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 Cu@Cu2O-BNDC catalyst was employed in electrochemical sensing of DA and ACh in a working range of 0.004-542 mu M and 0.3-2602 mu M, 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.