Oxidation of dopamine on multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Novel films consisting of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were fabricated by means of the chemical vapor deposition technique with decomposition of either acetonitrile (ACN) or benzene (BZ) in the presence of ferrocene (FeCp2) which served as catalyst. The electrochemical response of the two different kinds of MWCNT-based films, further referred to as MWCNT-ACN and MWCNT-BZ, towards the oxidation of dopamine (DA) to dopamine-o-quinone (DAQ) was tested by means of cyclic voltammetry, differential pulse voltammetry, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Both MWCNT-based films exhibit quasi-reversible response towards DA/DAQ with some slight kinetic differences; specifically, the charge-transfer process was found to be faster on MWCNT-ACN (ks = 35.3 × 10−3 cm s−1) compared to MWCNT-BZ (ks = 6.55 × 10−3 cm s−1). The detection limit of MWCNT-BZ for DA (0.30 μM) appears to be poorer compared to that of MWCNT-ACN (0.03 μM), but nevertheless, both MWCNT-based films exhibit greater detection ability compared to other electrodes reported in the literature. The sensitivities of MWCNT-ACN and MWCNT-BZ towards DA/DAQ were determined as 0.65 and 0.22 A M−1 cm−2, respectively. The findings suggest that the fabricated MWCNT-based electrodes can be successfully applied for the detection of molecules with biological interest.