Studies on Structural Changes of Modified MWCNTs: Material for Electrochemical Monitoring of Antiviral Drug in Human Serum Samples

The development of a universal approach for precisely tuning the electrochemical characteristics of conducting carbon nanotubes for tracking harmful agents in the human body with high selectivity and sensitivity remains a challenge. Herein, we describe a simplistic, versatile, and general approach to the construction of functionalized electrochemical material. The design of electrochemical material consists of (i) modification of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) with dipodal naphthyl-based dipodal urea (KR-1) through non-covalent functionalization (KR-1@MWCNT) which enhances the dispersibility of MWCNT and hence conductivity, (ii) complexation of KR-1@MWCNT with Hg2+ accelerate the electron transfer in the material which amplify the detection response of functionalized material (i. e., Hg/KR-1@MWCNT) towards various thymidine analogues. Further, the application of functionalized electrochemical material (Hg/KR-1@MWCNT) achieves real-time electrochemical monitoring of harmful antiviral drug 5-iodo-2'-iododeoxyuridine (IUdR) levels in human serum for the first time.

Automated summary

A simplistic, versatile, and general approach to constructing functionalized electrochemical materials is described in this study. This approach involves modifying multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) with dipodal naphthyl-based dipodal urea (KR-1) through non-covalent functionalization, complexing the modified MWCNT with Hg2+ to enhance electron transfer and detection response, and applying the functionalized electrochemical material (Hg/KR-1@MWCNT) for real-time electrochemical monitoring of harmful antiviral drug (IUdR) levels in human serum.