New Electrochemical Sensor Based on a Silver-Doped Iron Oxide Nanocomposite Coupled with Polyaniline and Its Sensing Application for Picomolar-Level Detection of Uric Acid in Human Blood and Urine Samples.

A simple and very sensitive electrochemical sensor for the detection of uric acid (UA) has been developed based on polyaniline (PANI) merged into a silver-doped iron oxide (Ag-FeO) nanocomposite-modified glassy carbon electrode. The synthesized ternary composite material (Ag-FeO@PANI) was characterized by UV-visible spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray, High-resolution transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and thermo gravimetric analysis analyses. The nanocomposite-modified electrode shows an exceptional electrocatalytic activity and reversibility to the oxidation of UA in a 0.1 M phosphate buffer solution (pH 7.0) compared to those in PANI and Ag-FeO. The detection limit of UA is found to be 102 pM with a linear dynamic range of 0.001-0.900 μM. The fabricated UA sensor also exhibits good selectivity, reproducibility, and long-time stability. The limit of detection and linear range attained for the synthesized composite are much greater compared to those of any other composite materials reported in the literature. The proposed method has been successfully applied for the selective detection of UA in various real samples such as human serum and urine with good recoveries. This platform that assimilates such electrocatalytic ternary nanocomposite with high performance can be widely employed for fabricating diverse sensors.