Long Conducting and Water-Compatible Polymer/Carbon Nanotubes Nanocomposite with “Beads-on-a-String” Structure as a Highly Effective Electrochemical Sensing Material

A novel water-compatible polymer/carbon nanocomposite with a “beads-on-a-string” nanostructure was developed by a facile one-step co-assembly of an amphiphilic random copolymer with multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), and successfully applied as effective electrode material for electrochemical sensing with high sensitivity. An amphiphilic photo-cross-linkable random copolymer poly(AA-co-VMc-co-EHA) (PAVE) was synthesized via one-step radical polymerization. Then the PAVE copolymer was co-assembled with MWCNTs noncovalently in selective solvent, generating water-compatible and “beads-on-a-string” structured polymer/carbon nanocomposites (PAVE-CNTs NCs) with PAVE nanoparticles as nanosized beads and MWCNTs as micron-long conducting strings. Then PAVE-CNTs NCs were used as electrode material for electrochemical sensing of a model target, namely, paracetamol (PCM). The resultant sensor shows significantly wider linear detection range with lower detection limit than other sensors. The excellent sensing perf...