A high oxidase-like activity, bimetallic single-atom nanozyme FeCe/NC prepared by FeCe-ZIF-8 approach for sensing tannic acid in tea

To improve the activity of single-atom nanozymes (SAzymes) for applications in food analysis, a new bimetal SAzyme FeCe/NC was developed. Its oxidase-like activity is 40% higher than that of single metal SAzyme Fe/NC. Based on a series of characterization investigations, the catalytic mechanism is that it directly catalyzed O2 to generate •OH, O2•-and 1O2. It could directly catalyze oxidation 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) to blue oxTMB, thereunder, a FeCe/NC SAzyme-TMB colorimetric method for the detection of tannic acid (TA) was constructed after the optimization of catalytic conditions. The method has a high R2 of 0.995, a low limit of detection (LOD) of 0.26 μmol/L, and high stability. The detection performance was validated by the real samples (tea). Therefore, the prepared bimetallic SAzyme FeCe/NC can be applied for TA detection without the addition of H2O2, and will have broad applications in the areas of food, feed, and life science.