MOF-derived CeO2/Co3O4–Fe2O3@CC nanocomposites as highly sensitive electrochemical sensor for bisphenol A detection

A novel CeO2/Co3O4–Fe2O3@CC electrode derived from CeCo-MOFs was developed for detecting the endocrine disruptor bisphenol A (BPA). Firstly, bimetallic CeCo-MOFs were prepared by hydrothermal method, and obtained material was calcined to form metal oxides after doping Fe element. The results suggested that hydrophilic carbon cloth (CC) modified with CeO2/Co3O4–Fe2O3 had good conductivity and high electrocatalytic activity. By the analyses of cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), the introduction of Fe increased the current response and conductivity of the sensor, greatly increasing the effective active area of the electrode. Significantly, electrochemical test proves that the prepared CeO2/Co3O4–Fe2O3@CC had excellent electrochemical response to BPA with a low detection limit of 8.7 nM, an excellent sensitivity of 20.489 μA/μM·cm2, a linear range of 0.5–30 μM, and strong selectivity. In addition, the CeO2/Co3O4–Fe2O3@CC sensor had a high recovery rate for the detection of BPA in real tap water, lake water, soil eluent, seawater, and PET bottle samples, which showed its potential in practical applications. To sum up, the CeO2/Co3O4–Fe2O3@CC sensor prepared in this work had excellent sensing performance, good stability and selectivity for BPA, which can be well used for the detection of BPA.