Photochemical Activation of Non-enzymatic Sensors Based on Cu/TiO2

In this paper are reported the photoelectrochemical properties of CuO/TiO2 for glucose sensing in alkaline media. First, we synthesized by the sol-gel method Cu-TiO2 samples having different Cu loading (from 0 to 10 wt%). The nanometric size of the materials synthesized is evidenced by the characterization done with different methods, including scanning electron microscopy SEM/EDX, TEM and X-ray powder diffraction XRPD. The influence of Cu loading over the photocatalytic performances of TiO2 was examined in detail carrying out electrochemical sensing tests at different illumination conditions. The obtained results demonstrated that the modified electrodes showed a higher specific response signal, lower detection limit and wider linearity range than the blank CuO electrode. The results of this study offer then guidelines for the design of photo-electrochemical screen-printed electrodes based on nano-sized CuO on titania for efficient detection of glucose.