Three-dimensional hierarchical mesoporous carbon for regenerative electrochemical dopamine sensor

Abstract The detection of dopamine (DA) based on electrochemical sensor is of great importance to human diseases diagnosis and treatment. However, such sensors usually faced with the performance deterioration due to serious dopamine fouling. Herein, we fabricated a three-dimensional (3D) porous carbon sheet with hierarchical ordered mesopores by a facile dual-template method, the integrated electrochemical sensor was further discussed in terms of the evolution of porous structure. Results showed that the hierarchical porous structure would provide more mass transport channels and larger active area, resulting in higher sensitivity. In particular, the 3D framework could withstand strong ultrasound cleaning and maintained the superior electrochemical properties with high repeatability after the ultrasonic cleaning for dopamine fouling. The integrated sensor based on 3D porous carbon with high sp2 content presented the excellent performance toward DA detection with wide linear range from 800 nM to 400 μM, low detection limit of 100 nM as well as good selectivity to routine interference substances. It can be said that the constructed 3D hierarchical mesoporous carbon provides the great potential to be a promising material for DA electrochemical sensing platform construction.