Defect-mediated synthesis of Pt nanoparticles uniformly anchored on partially-unzipped carbon nanofibers for electrochemical biosensing

Defect-mediated engineering has been proven as a novel and effective strategy to integrate two individual materials into a nanocomposite to boost the performance. In the present work, nanocomposite of partially-unzipped stacked-cup carbon nanofibers (PUSCNFs) decorated with platinum nanoparticles (Pt NPs) have been successfully synthesized through the defect-mediated formation method. Owing to the introduction of abundant structural defects during the chemical oxidation process , Pt NPs with an average diameter of 2–3 nm were uniformly anchored on the PUSCNFs without any surfactant involved. As comparison, the Pt NPs grown on the stacked-cup carbon nanofibers (SCNFs) possessed markedly larger nanoparticle size and trended to aggregate. The electrochemical properties of the nanocomposite-modified electrodes for biosensing were examined. Our results showed the Pt-PUSCNFs nanocomposite possessed optimal electrocatalytic activities and biosensing performance for detection of biomolecules, which could be attributed to a synergistic effect between the PUSCNFs and Pt NPs on electron transport and catalytic properties. We anticipate that the PUSCNFs may be a potential support material for construction of nanocomposites with good performance.