Facile synthesis of urchin-like gold submicrostructures for nonenzymatic glucose sensing

Urchin-like gold submicrostructures (UGS) were successfully synthesized by a seed-mediated method which is quite facile and does not need any template or surfactant agent. The effect of the added silver seeds on the morphology and size of final products were investigated, and a possible growth mechanism of crystals was proposed. Electrochemical characterization indicated that these UGS have better catalytic activity for the glucose oxidation compared with flower-like gold submicrostructures (FGS), which could be ascribed to its higher surface to volume ratio. An electrochemical nonenzymatic glucose sensor was fabricated simply by casting the UGS and Nafion solution onto glass carbon electrode. This sensor displays a wide linear range from 0.2 to 13.2 mM with a high sensitivity of 16.8 μA mM−1 cm−2, and a detection limit of 10 μM. The unique properties of this sensor, such as fast response and well stability reveal the potential application of the UGS based materials in nonenzymatic detection of glucose.