Facile preparation of ternary heterostructured Au/polyoxometalate/nitrogen- doped hollow carbon sphere nanohybrids for the acetaminophen detection

An original electroanalytical sensing platform based on gold nanoparticles/polyoxometalate/nitrogen-doped hollow carbon sphere (Au/POM/NHCS) was developed to implement quantitative analysis of acetaminophen (AP) and exhibits advanced performance. The hollow carbon sphere (HCS) matrix was fabricated using hard template method followed by doping nitrogen on HCS. Furthermore, POM (H3PW12O40) can serve as a reductive and coating agent for gold nanoparticles (Au NPs), as well as a binder between Au NPs and NHCS. The enhancement of synergistic effects of Au NPs and NHCS resulted in a significant conductivity boosting the electrocatalytic performance for AP with a catalytic rate constant (kcat) of 1.45 × 105 M−1 s−1. As a results, the AP sensor showed a lower detection limit of 4.56 nM, a broader linearity of 0.02–4.74 µM with a higher sensitivity of 1151.76 µA mM−1 and 4.74–64.74 µM with a sensitivity of 324.58 µA mM−1. This proves that tri-component Au/POM/NHCS nanohybrids could be a prospective and favorable material for the development of the AP electrochemical sensors with outstanding performance.