Dispersion of multi-wall carbon nanotubes in polyethylenimine: A new alternative for preparing electrochemical sensors

In this work we report on the analytical performance of glassy carbon electrodes modified with a dispersion of multi-wall carbon nanotubes in polyethylenimine (GCE/(PEI/CNT)). The resulting electrodes show an excellent electrocatalytic activity toward different bioanalytes like ascorbic acid, dopamine, 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (dopac) and hydrogen peroxide. An important decrease in the overvoltages for the oxidation of ascorbic acid (505 mV) and hydrogen peroxide (350 mV) and for the reduction of hydrogen peroxide (450 mV), as well as a dramatic improvement in the reversibility of the electrochemical behavior of dopamine and dopac is obtained. The currents are higher than those obtained with other dispersant agents like Nafion, concentrated acids or chitosan, evidencing the high efficiency of the dispersion in PEI. The GCE/(PEI/CNT) demonstrated to be highly reproducible, with 3.0%) RSD for the sensitivity of hydrogen peroxide for 10 electrodes prepared with five different dispersions. Differences in sensitivity of 10.0% were obtained for hydrogen peroxide with electrodes prepared using the same dispersion even after 14 days preparation. The CNT/PEI layer immobilized on glassy carbon electrodes has been also used as a platform for building supramolecular architectures based on the self-assembling of polyelectrolytes without any pretreatment of the electrode surface, oxidation or derivatization of the carbon nanotubes, just taking advantages of the polycationic nature of the polymer used for dispersing the nanotubes. The self-assembling of glucose oxidase has allowed us to obtain a supramolecular multistructure for glucose biosensing, with detection limits of 11 mu M (0.02 g/L). Such an excellent performance of GCE/(PEI/CNT) toward hydrogen peroxide and the effectiveness of the use of CNT/PEI as a platform for obtaining supramolecular multistructures, represents a very good alternative for developing other enzymatic biosensors. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.