Entrapment of bimetallic CoFeSe 2 nanosphere on functionalized carbon nanofiber for selective and sensitive electrochemical detection of caffeic acid in wine samples

Abstract The ever-increasing requirement of an electrochemical sensor in various paramedical and industrial applications, the recent research is motivated to fabricate a new type of electrode material with unique electrochemical properties for quantitative detection of various target analytes. Recently, the metal diselenides have been interested in a broad range of electrochemical applications due to their interesting electrocatalytic performances. Despite the metal diselenides have been widely focused on hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), it is not much focused on electrochemical sensor. For the first time, the bimetallic cobalt-iron diselenide nanosphere entrapped functionalized carbon nanofiber (CoFeSe 2 /f-CNF) composite have been synthesized by using simple hydrothermal synthesis and used as an electrode material for efficient electrochemical detection of caffeic acid (CA). The functionalization of CNF and the formation of CoFeSe 2 /f-CNF nanocomposite have been successfully scrutinized by using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. In addition, the electrochemical properties of CoFeSe 2 /f-CNF modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE) towards CA sensing were investigated by using cyclic voltammetry, differential pulse voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. As the result of the electrochemical studies, the developed CoFeSe 2 /f-CNF/GCE sensor exhibits very low detection limit (0.002 μM) and better sensitivity (2.04 μA μM −1  cm −2 ) of CA. And also, CoFeSe 2 /f-CNF/GCE sensor shows the feasible detection of CA in red wine samples, it reveals the excellent practicability of CoFeSe 2 /f-CNF/GCE.