Preparation of CuO/NiO composite nanofibers and their performance in non-enzymatic glucose detection

Novel CuO/NiO NFs with 3D porous heterojunction via electrospinning-calcination • High sensitivity (410.69μAmM −1  cm −2 ),low LOD (0.94 μM),wide linear range (10 μM-10 mM) • Synergistic catalysis by Cu 2+ /Cu 3+ and Ni 2+ /Ni 3+ redox couples with interfacial coupling • Excellent selectivity,reproducibility (RSD < 1.4%),stability (89.5% retention over 14d) • Multi-scale characterization confirms structure-performance correlation Diabetes, a globally prevalent chronic metabolic disorder, requires precise and rapid blood glucose monitoring for effective management. Addressing the bottlenecks of high cost and poor stability associated with enzyme-based sensors, as well as the limited performance of existing non-enzymatic sensors, this study successfully prepared CuO/NiO composite nanofibers (CuO/NiO NFs) via an integrated electrospinning-calcination strategy. The electrochemical performance of the material for non-enzymatic glucose detection was systematically evaluated. Results indicate that the CuO/NiO NFs-300 material, obtained under optimized calcination conditions at 300 °C, possesses a three-dimensional (3D) porous network structure, CuO/NiO heterointerfaces, and abundant surface oxygen vacancies. These features collectively induce a synergistic enhancement through geometric and electronic effects. The constructed sensor demonstrated outstanding comprehensive performance: a high sensitivity of 410.69 μA mM −1  cm −2 , a low detection limit of 0.94 μM, a wide linear range from 10 μM to 10 mM, along with high selectivity, excellent reproducibility, and long-term stability. Performance comparison reveals that this work achieves an order-of-magnitude improvement in sensitivity across a wide linear range, overcoming the common limitation in existing technologies where facile preparation and high performance are difficult to reconcile. Crucially, it maintained high accuracy (average recovery rate of 99.1%) in spike-recovery tests using a commercial functional beverages as a complex real-world sample, highlighting its strong potential for practical analytical applications. The schematic diagram of the preparation process of CuO/NiO NFs. Download: Download high-res image (119KB) Download: Download full-size image