Polyaniline Sheathed Black Phosphorous: A Novel, Advanced Platform for Electrochemical Sensing Applications

Despite its excellent properties, the inherent unstable nature of black phosphorus (BP) in ambient atmosphere has severely restricted its use in electrochemical sensing applications. In this work, polyaniline (PANI) sheathed BP was prepared via the electrochemical polymerisation of aniline on BP coated screen printed carbon electrode (i. e., SPCE/BP) which resulted in an efficient, stable electrochemical platform (i. e., SPCE/BP@PANI) with improved properties which was evaluated for electrochemical detection of two model bioanalytes namely, ascorbic acid (AA) and Hydrazine (Hy). The formation of PANI on the SPCE/BP exhibited a pair of stable and well-defined redox peaks indicating the better adsorption energy and fast electron transfer nature of BP as compared to other 2D materials like graphene and transitional metal dichalcogenides. FESEM and XPS studies revealed the formation and uniform growth of PANI on BP surface without any aggregation. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy analyses revealed that SPCE/BP@PANI can act as a suitable electrocatalyst material for the sensing of AA and Hy. Thus, SPCE/BP@PANI electrode exhibited low limit of detection (DL; 1.69 μM), excellent reproducibility and better selectivity towards AA oxidation over glucose, sucrose, urea, citric acid, sodium, nitrate, nitrite and magnesium with a sensitivity of 3.38 A M−1 cm−2 (R2=0.98) in the dynamic range of 10–1100 μM. The excellent analytical performance of the BP@PANI is plausible due to better adsorption energy and fast electron transfer of BP. Further, SPCE/BP@PANI was also used for successful detection of AA in processed fruit juice with good recovery. Under the optimal DPV conditions, the modified electrode was extended for detection of Hy in a linear range of 100–1500 μM with sensitivity of 0.09 A M−1 cm−2 (R2=0.99) and DL=89 μM validating the potential of BP based composites in wide range of electrochemical applications