High-sensitivity photo-electrochemical heterostructure of the cuprous oxide-metal organic framework for a dioctyl phthalate molecularly imprinted sensor.

This work designed a novel dioctyl phthalate (DOP) photoelectrochemical (PEC) sensor based on a molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) modified Cu(BTC)@CuO heterostructure. In this work, a metal organic framework (MOF), Cu(BTC), was coated on CuO through a simple immersion method to form a Cu(BTC)@CuO heterostructure. The heterostructure exhibited strong light adsorption ability, good stability and enhanced photocurrent under visible light irradiation. Using the Cu(BTC)@CuO heterostructure as the photoelectric converter, a PEC sensor was constructed by imprinting DOP on the heterostructure. Under the optimal experimental conditions, the PEC sensor showed a wide linear range from 25.0 pM-0.1 μM and a low detection limit of 9.15 pM. This method with good sensitivity, stability, selectivity and reproducibility in actual sample analyses showed promising applications of the MOF-based heterostructure in photoelectrochemical analysis fields.