One-step electrodeposition of AuNi nanodendrite arrays as photoelectrochemical biosensors for glucose and hydrogen peroxide detection

A novel nonsemiconductor photoelectrochemical biosensor was first constructed using the unique plasmonic AuNi nanodendrite arrays. The AuNi nanodendrite arrays were rapidly prepared by a one-step electrodeposition method using the porous anodic aluminum templates. Owing to its hierarchical structure with abundant active sites, the synergistic catalytic of Au and Ni can be better exploited. These plasmonic AuNi nanodendrite arrays display exceptional photoelectrocatalytic activities for glucose oxidation and hydrogen peroxide reduction reaction under visible light illumination. Specifically, the detection sensitivity for glucose (3.7277 mA mM −1  cm −2 ) under illumination is about 3.3 folds improvement than in the dark (1.1287 mA mM −1  cm −2 ), together with high accuracy and low detection limit of 3 μM. The markedly enhanced performance of AuNi nanodendrite arrays can be attributed to its hierarchical structure with abundant active sites and plasmonic effect of Au with strong absorption band in visible region. Such a newly developed method via the facile and low-cost route is of great significance in designing the plasmon-aided photoelectrochemical biosensors.