ABSTRACT
Identifying the species and concentrations of antioxidants is really important because antioxidants play important roles in various biological processes and numerous diseases. Compared with an individual sensor detecting a single antioxidant with limited specificity, a sensor array could simultaneously identify various antioxidants, in which 3-5 types of nanomaterials with peroxidase-like activity are absolutely necessary. Herein, as a single-atom nanozyme, Fe-N/C with oxidase-mimicking activity was applied to construct a triple-channel colorimetric sensor array: (1) Fe-N/C catalytically oxidized three substrates 3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB), 2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) and o-phenylenediamine (OPD) to produce blue oxidized TMB (oxTMB), green oxidized ABTS (oxABTS) and yellow oxidized OPD (oxOPD), respectively; (2) with oxTMB, oxABTS and oxOPD as three sensing channels, a colorimetric sensor array was constructed for simultaneously discriminating glutathione (GSH), l-cysteine (l-Cys), ascorbic acid (AA), uric acid (UA), and melatonin (MT), even quantifying concentrations (with GSH as a model analyst). The performance of the sensor array was validated through accurately identifying 15 blind samples containing GSH, l-Cys, AA, UA and MT in buffer solution and human serum samples, and also in binary and ternary mixtures. This work proved that fabricating a single nanozyme-based sensor array was a simplified and reliable strategy for simultaneously probing multiple antioxidants.
