Construction of hollow few-layer MXene nanosheets@Ni-Fe layered double hydroxide microrods for enhanced...

Herein, a novel synthetic method is proposed to obtain hollow few-layer Ti₃C₂T_x nanosheets@Ni-Fe layered double hydroxide microrods (Ti₃C₂T_x@NiFe-LDH), which includes the coating process of MIL-88A microrods by two-dimensional Ti₃C₂T_x nanosheets, the pre-adsorption process of 2-methylimidazole on the surfaces of MIL-88A@Ti₃C₂T_x microrods, and the co-precipitation process of Ni²⁺ and Fe³⁺ with the interlayer of fumaric acid anions, resulting in the unique material structure of Ti₃C₂T_x@NiFe-LDH. More importantly, hollow microrods composed of Ti₃C₂T_x and NiFe-LDH nanosheets show the structural advantages, which are responsible for the high-performance behaviors towards the non-enzymatic detection of glucose, leading to 0.5-115.0 μM of linear detection range (R² = 0.999) and 529 μA mM^-1 cm^-2 of sensitivity. Especially, the detection limit of the established sensor based on Ti₃C₂T_x@NiFe-LDH is 22 nM, revealing the advantage in low-concentration determination. First, the interlaced NiFe-LDH nanosheets provide plentiful non-enzymatic active sites for the electrocatalytic oxidation of glucose. Second, few-layer Ti₃C₂T_x nanosheets as the supporting substrate not only achieve the rapid transport of electrons that are produced in the electrochemical reaction, but also stabilize the structure of hollow microrods. Our work presents a method to enhance the electrochemical performances by precisely designing micro-nanostructures based on the combination of MXene and LDH.