Tailoring the electrocatalytic activity of porous carbon with heteroatom dopants for the quantification of acetaminophen in pharmaceuticals and biological samples

Abstract

Developing an efficient, metal-free, stable electrocatalyst for electrochemical applications is highly desirable and challenging. In the realm of catalysis, the heteroatom doping approach is a modulating strategy as well as a potential way of boosting the electrocatalytic activity of mesoporous carbon (MC). In this context, we propose an efficient nanocasting route followed by carbonization for synthesizing doped-MC. Due to the porous texture and synergic impact of dopants, nitrogen and phosphorous co-doped MC (NP-MC) were constructed using dopamine and phytic acid as precursors. Furthermore, NP-MC possesses a surface area of 970 m² g⁻¹ with a high amount of graphitic and pyridinic active sites. It was found that NP-MC exhibits higher electrochemical activity via the assay of acetaminophen (ACAP) by differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) and an amperometric procedure. On top of this, the prepared NP-MC material reached an ultra-low detection limit of 0.027 μM, with a wide linear range over a concentration from 3–4000 μM with appreciable sensitivity and selectivity. We demonstrated accurate detection with NP-MC for the real-time recognition of ACAP in human serum and pharmaceutical drugs as well as artificial sweat, saliva, and urine samples.