Electrodeposition of Metal Nanoparticles inside Carbon Nanopipettes for Sensing Applications.

Conductive nanopipettes offer promising confined spaces to enable advanced electrochemical sensing applications in small spaces. Herein, a series of metal-decorated carbon nanopipettes (CNPs) were developed, in which Au, Ag, and Pt are modified at the inner walls of CNPs by a simple electrodeposition method. The fabricated tips show good sensing performances for a variety of important analytes, such as glucose, hydrogen peroxide, and chloride and hydrogen ions in biological and catalytic systems. This simple and effective approach can be further extended to prepare other functionalized nanopipette electrodes toward more versatile and powerful measurements in electrochemical sensing and imaging applications.