Colorimetric detection of glucose using a boronic acid derivative receptor attached to unmodified AuNPs

A simple, cheap and non-enzymatic colorimetric strategy for glucose detection has been designed based on the interactions between a phenylboronic acid (PBA) derivative, which is coupled with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as the colorimetric reporters, and glucose. The PBA-AuNPs hybrid system proposed here exhibits ordered photochemistry behaviors upon the addition of glucose at different pH values. There are two linear regions of glucose concentration for the glucose sensor at different pH values, i.e., between 0.1 mmol/L and 9.8 mmol/L at pH 6 with the detection limit of 64 μmol/L and between 0 and 6.5 mmol/L with the detection limit of 48 μmol/L at pH 9, respectively. To test the practicality of the sensor system, we also applied this assay to detect a glucose sample in the artificial saliva.