Facile fabrication of nanoporous PdFe alloy for nonenzymatic electrochemical sensing of hydrogen peroxide and glucose

•NP-PdFe alloy is fabricated by a simple dealloying method.•NP-PdFe possesses open three-dimensional bicontinuous spongy morphology.•NP-PdFe shows high electrochemical sensing activities towards H2O2 and glucose.•NP-PdFe shows good long-term stability for H2O2 and glucose detection.•NP-PdFe shows good reproducibility for H2O2 and glucose detection.

Nanoporous (NP) PdFe alloy is easily fabricated through one step mild dealloying of PdFeAl ternary source alloy in NaOH solution. Electron microscopy characterization demonstrates that selectively dissolving Al from PdFeAl alloy generates three-dimensional bicontinuous nanospongy architecture with the typical ligament size around 5 nm. Electrochemical measurements show that the NP-PdFe alloy exhibits the superior electrocatalytic activity and durability towards hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) detection compared with NP-Pd and commercial Pd/C catalysts. In addition, NP-PdFe performs high sensing performance towards H2O2 in a wide linear range from 0.5 to 6 mM with a low detection limit of 2.1 μM. This nanoporous structure also can sensitively detect glucose over a wide concentration range (1–32 mM) with a low detection limit of 1.6 μM and high resistance against chloride ions. Along with these attractive features, the as-made NP-PdFe alloy also has a good anti-interference towards ascorbic acid, uric acid, and dopamine.

Graphical abstractNanoporous PdFe alloy, characterized by open three-dimensional bicontinuous nanospongy architecture, was easily fabricated by selectively dealloying PdFeAl source alloys, which exhibits greatly enhanced sensing performance and structure stability towards H2O2 and glucose compared with NP-Pd and Pd/C catalysts.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide