A new third-generation biosensor for superoxide anion based on dendritic gold nanostructure

•The dendritic gold nanostructure was fabricated by electrodeposition method.•A third-generation O2− biosensor based on dendritic gold nanostructure was developed.•The sensor shows good analytical performance for O2− detection.

In this paper, a facile electrodeposition method without any additive has been successfully adopted to fabricate dendritic gold nanostructure (DenAu) on glassy carbon (GC) electrode and the prepared DenAu/GC electrode has large surface area. A sensitive third-generation superoxide radical (O2−) biosensor was then constructed by assembled l-cysteine (cys) onto the DenAu/GC electrode to immobilize large amounts of superoxide dismutase (SOD). The direct electron transfer of SOD was successfully realized and a pair of quasi-reversible redox peaks of SOD was observed at the SOD/cys/DenAu/GC electrode in the phosphate buffer solution (25 mM, pH 7.2). Due to the high loading of SOD on the electrode, the resulted biosensor exhibited good analytical performance for O2− detection, such as a low detection limit of 2.1 nM, a good stability and reproducibility, especially a wide linear range up to 540 μM.

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