Porphyrin-based porous organic frameworks as efficient peroxidase mimics for selective detection of hydrogen peroxide and glucose

Abstract

Glucose is regarded as a clinical biomarker, and the abnormal level of glucose in blood would cause endocrine metabolic diseases. Thus, it is of great significance to develop a simple, accurate, and sensitive method for glucose detection. In this work, we synthesized an iron porphyrin-based porous organic framework (Fe-POF) through a facile alkylation reaction between 5,10,15,20-tetra(4-aminophenyl) porphyrin (TAPP) and cyanuric chloride. Fe-POF exhibited excellent peroxidase-like activity and could be used to detect hydrogen peroxide and the molecules associated with hydrogen peroxide such as glucose. The structure of Fe-POF was confirmed through a series of methods, such as FT-IR, SEM, EDS, TEM, and XPS. Fe-POF exhibited excellent peroxidase-like activity, which could catalyze the oxidization of colorless 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) into blue product (ox-TMB) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Based on this phenomenon, a simple colorimetric assay was constructed for the detection of H2O2 and glucose with high selectivity and sensitivity. The detection limit of H2O2 and glucose was calculated to be 1.8 and 1.39 µM, respectively. Finally, Fe-POF was applied as a colorimetric sensor for rapid detection of glucose in diluted serum samples.