Photoamperometric flow injection analysis of glucose based on dehydrogenase modified quantum dots-carbon nanotube nanocomposite electrode

•ZnS-CdS hybrid QDs was electrodeposited onto MWCNT/GCE•Proposed electrode was used for photoelectrochemical glucose biosensing in FIA system for the first time•Simple, economical and fast biosensor was constructed for glucose detection.

In this work, a core-shell quantum dot (QD, ZnS-CdS) was electrodeposited onto multiwalled carbon nanotube modified glassy carbon electrode (ZnS-CdS/MWCNT/GCE) and following glucose dehydrogenase (GDH) was immobilized onto QD modified electrode. The proposed electrode (GDH/ZnS-CdS/MWCNT/GCE) was effectively used for the photoelectrochemical biosensing of glucose in flow injection analysis (FIA) system using a home-made flow cell. Results from cyclic voltammetric and FI amperometric measurements have revealed that GDH/ZnS-CdS/MWCNT/GCE is capable of signaling photoelectrocatalytic activity toward NADH when the surface of enzyme modified electrode was irradiated with a light source (250 W Halogen lamp). Thus, photoelectrochemical biosensing of glucose was monitored by recording current-time curve of enzymatically produced NADH at optimized conditions. The biosensor response was found linear over the range 0.010–2.0 mM glucose with detection limits of 6.0 and 4.0 μM for amperometric and photoamperometric methods, respectively. The relative standard deviations (n = 5) for 0.5 mM glucose were 5.8% and 3.8% for photoamperometric and amperometric results, respectively. The photoelectrochemical biosensor was successfully applied to the real samples. The results with this biosensor showed good selectivity, repeatability and sensitivity for monitoring glucose in amperometric and photoamperometric FIA studies.