Microwave-assisted synthesis of bio-based Ni@NSiC nanocomposites for high efficient electrocatalysis of glucose

Abstract In the present study, the magnolia leaf was used as the carbon source to synthesize a sustainable high-efficiency electro-catalytic material via a microwave-assisted synthesis approach. The carbon shell-wrapped nickel nanoparticles were grown in situ on 3D silica carbon-based nanoclusters to prepare NiSiO3/CNX biomass nanocomposites. Ni@NSiC-900 nitrogen-doped nanocomposite was obtained under ammonia etching at 900 °C. The prepared Ni@NSiC nanocomposite was characterized by SEM, XPS, XRD and TEM technologies. Results showed that the prepared material had moderate lattice defects and excellent electrocatalytic performance for glucose detection. The distinctive electrochemical performance might be illustrated by the ultra-thin carbon shell, high conductivity of highly uniformly dispersed nickel nanoparticles and SiO2/CNX substrate. In order to further investigate its electrochemical application, Ni@NSiC-900 was applied to construct a sensing platform for glucose detection, the obtained sensitivity, response time, detection limit and linear range was 282.38 µAcm−2 mM−1, 1.2 s, 1.23 µM and up to 8145.75 µM, respectively. Studies with ascorbic, uric acid, dopamine, lactose, fructose and maltose showed that their interference with glucose measurement was negligible or overcame, and an excellent analytical performance was obtained in the actual sample analysis. The obtained results in this study implicated that the nanocomposite was a potential practical candidate for biosensors materials.