One-Pot Synthesis of Fe3O4 Nanoparticle Loaded 3D Porous Graphene Nanocomposites with Enhanced Nanozyme Activity for Glucose Detection

Abstract

A novel one-pot strategy is proposed to fabricate 3D porous graphene (3D GN) decorated with Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles (Fe₃O₄ NPs) by using hemin as iron source. During the process, graphene oxide was simultaneously reduced and self-assembled to form 3D graphene hydrogel while Fe₃O₄ NPs synthesized from hemin distributed uniformly on 3D GN. The preparation process is simple, facile, economical, and green. The obtained freeze-dried product (3D GH-5) exhibits outstanding peroxidase-like activity. Compared to the traditional 2D graphene-based nanocomposites, the introduced 3D porous structure dramatically improved the catalytic activity, as well as the catalysis velocity and its affinity for substrate. The high catalytic activity could be ascribed to the formation of Fe₃O₄ NPs and 3D porous graphene structures. Based on its peroxidase-like activity, 3D GH-5 was used for colorimetric determination of glucose with a low detection limit of 0.8 μM.

Keywords: 3D graphene nanocomposites; colorimetry; glucose detection; one-pot; peroxidase mimics.