A simple one-pot synthesis of graphene nanosheet/SnO2 nanoparticle hybrid nanocomposites and their application for selective and sensitive electrochemical detection of dopamine

Abstract

A novel one-pot synthesis of graphene nanosheet/SnO₂ nanoparticle hybrid nanocomposites (GN/SnO₂) was realized by using graphene oxide nanosheets (GONs) functionalized with sodium dodecyl sulfonate and SnCl₂ as the starting materials. The morphology and structure of the synthesized SDS-GN/SnO₂ nanocomposites were characterized by Raman spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction analysis. It was found that SnO₂ nanoparticles were homogeneously distributed on the graphene nanosheets. The electrochemical behavior of dopamine (DA) at the SDS-GN/SnO₂ nanoparticle modified electrode was studied by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). The results showed that the modified electrode exhibited excellent electrocatalytic activity towards the electrochemical oxidation of DA. The separation of the oxidation peak potentials for ascorbic acid (AA)-DA, uric acid (UA)-DA and UA-AA obtained by DPV is about 132 mV, 128 mV and 260 mV, respectively, which allows selective and sensitive detection of DA in the presence of AA and UA. The anodic peak currents were linear with the concentration of DA in the range from 1.0 × 10⁻⁷ to 1.0 × 10⁻⁵ M with a coefficient of 0.9980. The detection limit was 80 nM (S/N = 3). The proposed method could be applied for the determination of DA in real human urine samples.