Facile synthesis of enzyme-embedded magnetic metal–organic frameworks as a reusable mimic multi-enzyme system: mimetic peroxidase properties and colorimetric sensor

This work reports a facile and easily-achieved approach for enzyme immobilization by embedding glucose oxidase (GOx) in magnetic zeolitic imidazolate framework 8 (mZIF-8) via a de novo approach. As a demonstration of the power of such materials, the resulting GOx embedded mZIF-8 (mZIF-8@GOx) was utilized as a colorimetric sensor for rapid detection of glucose. This method was constructed on the basis of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), which possessed very fascinating peroxidase-like properties, and the cascade reaction for the visual detection of glucose was combined into one step through the mZIF-8@GOx based mimic multi-enzyme system. After characterization by electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, nitrogen sorption, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and vibrating sample magnetometry, the as-prepared mZIF-8@GOx was confirmed with the robust core–shell structure, the monodisperse nanoparticle had an average diameter of about 200 nm and displayed superparamagnetism with a saturation magnetization value of 40.5 emu g−1, it also exhibited a large surface area of 396.10 m2 g−1. As a peroxidase mimic, mZIF-8 was verified to be highly stable and of low cost, and showed a strong affinity towards H2O2. Meanwhile, the mZIF-8 embedded GOx also exhibited improved activity, stability and greatly enhanced selectivity in glucose detection. Moreover, the mZIF-8@GOx had excellent recyclability with high activity (88.7% residual activity after 12 times reuse).