Preparation of Porous Hollow CoOx Nanocubes via Chemical Etching Prussian Blue Analogue for Glucose Sensing

Hollow metal or metal oxide nanostructures have become one of the most promising functional materials in sensor, catalysis, energy conversion, etc. In this work, a novel hollow CoOx nanocube with porous shell was fabricated based on Prussian blue analogue (PBA)-derived method. The hollow Co(OH)(2) nanocubes were firstly formed through chemical treatment of PBA in a NaOH solution then converted into hollow CoOx nanocubes with porous shell at 40 degrees C in air. The CoOx nanostructures were characterized in detail by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, energy dispersive spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The electrocatalytic properties of the hollow CoOx nanocubes with porous shell were investigated by cyclic voltammetry and amperometry. The resulted nanostructures were used to construct a novel glucose sensor with good performance owing to the good catalytic activity and high surface area of hollow CoOx nanocubes with porous shell. The proposed method is simple, efficient, cheap and easy to mass production. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.