Electrochemical Sensing of Uric Acid with Zinc Oxide Nanorods Decorated with Copper Oxide Nanoseeds

The use of hybrid nanostructured nanomaterials in sensor development has the potential to overcome the sensitivity issue due to the combination of different nanoscale features of the desired nanomaterials that are accumulated together and offer entirely different characteristics. The sensitive quantification of biomolecules is required for early disease diagnosis. Herein, a hybrid (zinc oxide nanorods modified with copper oxide nanoseeds (ZnO NRs-CuO NSs)) nanostructured nanomaterial-integrated sensor that detects uric acid (UA) is reported. A low-temperature solution-based method was described for ZnO NR and ZnO NR-CuO NS hybrid nanomaterial syntheses. The use of the ZnO NR-CuO NS hybrid nanomaterial resulted in ultra-high sensitivity (1477.88 μA/mM cm²) toward UA detection using the differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) technique. DPV resulted in ∼7.7 times better sensitivity compared to cyclic voltammetry (CV)-measured sensitivity (187.32 μA/mM cm²). The surface modification of ZnO NRs with CuO NS “hybrid nanostructures” showed a significant impact and synergistic effect that enhanced the sensing performance. Furthermore, selectivity, stability, fabrication reproducibility, and applicability in the real sample are other crucial factors of this ZnO NR-CuO NS hybrid nanomaterial-based UA sensor.