Controllable doping of Fe atoms into MoS2 nanosheets towards peroxidase-like nanozyme with enhanced catalysis for colorimetric analysis of glucose

MoS2 nanosheets were doped with Fe elements simply via the one-pot hydrothermal route resulting in the peroxidase-like nanozymes with dramatically enhanced catalysis. It was discovered that the resulted Fe-MoS2 could display controllable catalysis activities depending on the Mo-to-Fe molar ratios, among which the highest one was achieved at 3/1 with catalysis efficiency over three folds higher than that of pristine MoS2. The greatly improved catalysis performances of Fe-MoS2 nanozyme are thought to be resulted from the synergistic effects of the doped Fe atom and Mo-S sites. On the one hand, herein, the Fe sites might serve as the electron transferring mediators to facilitate the peroxidase-like catalytic reactions, as confirmed by the cytochrome C-based electron transportation experiments. On the other hand, the Mo-S sites might conduct the catalytic behavior of Fenton-like reactions, as revealed by the hydroxyl radicals-capturing experiments. Furthermore, the feasibility of practical applications for the developed Fe-MoS2 nanozyme based colorimetric methods was demonstrated for glucose in blood sample. Importantly, an insight can be thereby obtained into the design of different nanozymes with enhanced catalysis designed by doping heteroatoms like Fe, promising for the catalysis-based applications in the biomedical analysis, food safety, and environmental monitoring fields.