Porous carbon scaffolded Fe-based alloy nanoparticles for electrochemical quantification of acetaminophen and rutin

Carbon materials derived from metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are doped with metal nanoparticles. They thus feature porous structures and many metallic active sites, showing excellent electrochemical performance (e.g., high catalytic activity and good electroconductibility). In the present work, hierarchical porous carbon nanorods doped with a bimetallic Fe/M (M = Co, Ni, Mn) alloy (FeM@C) are synthesized via simply pyrolyzing bimetallic MOFs (FeM-MIL-88B). As an electrocatalyst, the FeM@C composite is proved to be highly efficient in electrochemical sensing of pharmaceutical products, acetaminophen (AC) and rutin (RT) as the case studies in this work. FeCo@C displays higher electrochemical sensing capability over the FeNi@C and FeMn@C composites, attributed to the alloying-induced synergetic effect from Fe and Co. An established FeCo@C electrochemical sensor offers the linear ranges of 0.001–0.8 μM and 0.01–2 μM for the detection of AC and RT, respectively. Their detection limits are 0.59 and 3.41 nM, respectively. This sensor has been successfully applied for the determination of AC and RT in real drug samples with a respective recovery rate of 93.3%–101.6%. This study paves a way to design effective bimetal alloy nanoparticles and explore their applications in electrochemical sensing.