Porphyrin-based porous organic frameworks as efficient peroxidase mimics for selective detection of hydrogen peroxide and glucose

Glucose is regarded as a clinical biomarker, and the abnormal level of glucose in blood would cause endocrine metabolic diseases. Thus, it is of great significance to develop a simple, accurate, and sensitive method for glucose detection. In this work, we synthesized an iron porphyrin-based porous organic framework (Fe-POF) through a facile alkylation reaction between 5,10,15,20-tetra(4-aminophenyl) porphyrin (TAPP) and cyanuric chloride. Fe-POF exhibited excellent peroxidase-like activity and could be used to detect hydrogen peroxide and the molecules associated with hydrogen peroxide such as glucose. The structure of Fe-POF was confirmed through a series of methods, such as FT-IR, SEM, EDS, TEM, and XPS. Fe-POF exhibited excellent peroxidase-like activity, which could catalyze the oxidization of colorless 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) into blue product (ox-TMB) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ). Based on this phenomenon, a simple colorimetric assay was constructed for the detection of H 2 O 2 and glucose with high selectivity and sensitivity. The detection limit of H 2 O 2 and glucose was calculated to be 1.8 and 1.39 μM, respectively. Finally, Fe-POF was applied as a colorimetric sensor for rapid detection of glucose in diluted serum samples.