MnO₂ nanosheets as the biomimetic oxidase for rapid and sensitive oxalate detection combining with bionic E-eye

Urolithiasis commonly occurs in kidney and ureteral, and may cause local organ/tissue damage, even kidney failure. The incidence of this disease is increasing worldwide, in which calcium oxalate is the major composition forming the urinary calculus. Therefore, to monitor this disease for the prevention and treatment, measuring the oxalate in the urine is of great significance. Here, a rapid and sensitive colorimetric method was developed based on 3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine-manganese dioxide (TMB-MnO₂) nanosheets for oxalate detection. MnO₂ nanosheets acted as an efficient biomimetic oxidase to catalyze the reaction with TMB and oxalate. Pale yellow TMB can be oxidized to blue oxide TMB catalyzed by BSA-stabilized MnO₂ nanosheets, and oxalate can selectively inhibit this reaction by consuming and reacting with MnO₂ nanosheets, thus achieving the quantitative detection of oxalate. Moreover, a home-made bionic electronic-eye (E-eye) system was developed as a portable in-situ detection platform to efficiently measure the oxalate concentrations in 10 s by direct photographing. By optimizing experimental conditions, this method shows a wide linear range (7.8 μM to 250 μM) and a low detection limit (0.91 μM) for oxalate detection. Besides, this method exhibits high selectivity even with 80-fold interfering chemicals. Furthermore, the performance of the method was validated by testing the artificial urine samples, indicating its great potential for monitoring and diagnosis of urolithiasis in point-of-care applications.