LAUSR

Abstract Sensitive and selective detection of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) is of great importance since it plays crucial roles in the living organism. In this work, a novel sandwich structural electrochemical sensor was fabricated by the electropolymerization of 3-aminophenylboronic acid (APBA) on reduced graphene oxide modified electrode for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) detection. Based on boronate affinity, NADH can be anchored on the sensing interface through the covalent bond between the cis-diol group of NADH and the boric acid of APBA. Moreover, due to the polyphenolic hydroxyl structure, the anchored NADH can further be bound with ferrocene boric acid (FcBA) in solution via the second boronate affinity. Thus, a dual-signal aroused from the oxidation peak currents of NADH and FcBA were employed for the detection of NADH with improved sensitivity, resulting in a wide linear range of 5.0 × 10−8 −1.0 × 10−5 mol/L and a low limit of detection of 2.6 × 10−8 mol/L (S/N = 3). In addition, double boronate affinity endowed the sensor with excellent selectivity to NADH. With the good repeatability and stability, the prepared sensor was employed to determine NADH in human blood serum samples with satisfactory results.