Colorimetric sensing of glucose and GSH using core–shell Cu/Au nanoparticles with peroxidase mimicking activity

The catalytic properties of bimetallic nanoparticles have been widely studied by researchers in many fields. In this paper, core–shell Cu/Au nanoparticles (Cu/Au NPs) were synthesized by a simple and mild one-pot method, and their peroxidase activity was proved by catalyzing the oxidation of 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) with color change to blue. The change of solution color and absorbance strongly depends on the concentration of H2O2, so it can be used for direct detection of H2O2 and indirect detection of glucose. What's more, GSH can efficiently react with the hydroxyl radicals from H2O2 catalyzed by core–shell Cu/Au NPs to inhibit the production of ox-TMB. Thus, the concentration of GSH can be determined by the decrease in the absorbance of the solution at 652 nm. The results showed that our proposed strategy had good detection range and detection limit for the detection of glucose and GSH. This method has been used in the detection of practical samples and has great application potential in environmental monitoring and clinical diagnosis.