Facial Construction of CePO4-Reduced Graphene Oxide Composite for Enhanced Electrochemical Detection of Dopamine and Acetaminophen

Abstract

A serial of cerium phosphate/reduced graphene oxide (CePO4-rGO) composites were synthesized for the first time by one-pot hydrothermal method. Structural analyses revealed that flaky CePO4 and few-layer rGO were composited homogeneously. It is found that rGO can greatly enhance the conductivity and the adsorption capacity of the composite. With these advantages, the constructed composites were used for electrochemical detection of dopamine (DA) and acetaminophen (APAP). Further studies show that the loading amount of rGO was also very important. When CePO4−0.6rGO was used, wide linear ranges of 1.2−50 μM for DA and 0.5−30 μM for APAP can be obtained, respectively. The detection limits of DA and APAP were 0.013 μM and 0.025 μM with high sensitivities of 25.58 μA μM−1 cm−2 and 13.30 μA μM−1 cm−2, respectively. Moreover, the modified electrode also has high selectivity, good stability and satisfactory reproducibility. In addition, the modified electrode was also successfully applied to detect DA and APAP in real urine samples. This work provides a simple method for preparing new electrode materials for detecting small biomolecules.