Electrochemical sensing platform based on kelp-derived hierarchical meso-macroporous carbons

In this paper, kelp ( Laminaria japonica ), as a kind of abundant biomass, is used as the precursor for the preparation of kelp-derived hierarchical meso-macroporous carbons (K-dHMMCs) through the carbonization under nitrogen (N 2 ) atmosphere at high temperature. The K-dHMMCs exhibits the unique structure with high specific surface area of 416.02 m 2  g −1 , large pore volume of 0.24 cm 3  g −1 , the hierarchical meso-macroporous size distribution centered at 2, 12 and 82 nm and high density of defective sites, enabling K-dHMMCs attractive for the electrocatalysis . Drop-casting K-dHMMCs on the glassy carbon (GC) surface allows the construction of K-dHMMCs based electrochemical sensing platform, which shows electrocatalytic activities towards many electroactive molecules, such as potassium ferricyanide , nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ), dopamine (DA), uric acid (UA), ascorbic acid (AA), epinephrine (EP), l -tyrosine (Tyr) and acetaminophen (APAP). Especially, the K-dHMMCs modified GC (K-dHMMCs/GC) electrode exhibits higher sensitivity, wider linear range, and lower detection limit than both carbon nanotubes modified GC (CNTs/GC) and GC electrodes for H 2 O 2 detection, which makes the K-dHMMCs/GC electrode to be able to determine the H 2 O 2 levels in human urine sample and monitor the H 2 O 2 released from human cancer cells. These results demonstrate that K-dHMMCs/GC possesses a great potential for conventional electrochemical sensing applications.