Visible-light-driven photoelectrochemical sensing platform based on BiOI nanoflowers/TiO nanotubes for detection of atrazine in environmental samples.

In this work, a visible-light-driven photoelectrochemical (PEC) sensing platform was developed based on BiOI nanoflowers/TiO nanotubes (BiOI NFs/TiO NTs) for detection of atrazine (ATZ). The BiOI NFs/TiO NTs p-n heterojunctions synthesized by decorating BiOI NFs on TiO NTs via simple hydrothermal approach exhibit strong visible-light absorption ability, high photocurrent response and PEC activity. Thus BiOI NFs/TiO NTs heterostructures were first explored to act as the photoelectrode for the immobilization of the anti-ATZ aptamer to develop a PEC sensing platform. The design PEC aptasensing platform exhibits prominent analytical performance for determination of ATZ with a low detection limit of 0.5 pM under visible-light irradiation, and displays good selectivity for ATZ in the control experiments. The superior behavior of the sensing platform could be ascribed to the design of the appropriate sensing material with tubular microstructure, excellent PEC response of the photoelectrode, and the large loading amount of aptamer. Meanwhile, the PEC sensing platform was used to determine ATZ in environmental samples and a satisfied result was obtained.