Iron-core/carbon-shell nanoparticles with intrinsic peroxidase activity: new platform for mimetic glucose detection

Abstract

Artificial enzymatic mimics based on nanoparticles have become a powerful tool for the improvement of analytical performance in the detection of important bioactive compounds. For the first time the intrinsic peroxidase-like activity of Fe-core/carbon shell nanoparticles (Fe@C NPs) was studied. The catalytic process was described by a typical Michaelis–Menten curve for enzyme kinetics, and the results were comparable with those previously published. The high catalytic performance of the Fe@C NPs allows the development of a new simple procedure for glucose determination with a low detection limit of 0.21 μM. To our knowledge, this is the first study showing the ability to generate active oxygen species on the Fe@C surfaces. We suppose that our investigation will open up a new direction in medicinal applications using these promising materials.