Research Progress in Preparation of Cyclodextrin Functionalized Carbon Nanomaterials and Their Applications in Electrochemical Analysis

Abstract

Cyclodextrin (CD) molecules have a toroidal shape with a hydrophobic inner cavity and a hydrophilic exterior. The hydrophobic inner cavity can enable CD molecules to show high molecular selectivity and enrichment capability, and the hydrophilic exterior can make CD have high solubility in various solvents. On the other hand, because of the large theoretical surface areas and excellent electrochemical properties of carbon nanomaterials, they have important potential applications in electroanalytical chemistry. However, pure carbon nanomaterials usually are insoluble in solvents. Thus, it's of great significance to functionalize carbon nanomaterials with CD:CD not only improves the dispersity of carbon nanomaterials, but also enables high molecular selectivity and enrichment capacity, and hence shows extremely high electroanalytical capability. This review shows the methods and mechanism for preparing CD functionalized carbon nanomaterials (carbon nanotube, graphene, hollow carbon sphere,etc.) and their applications in electroanalytical chemistry. Finally, some critical challenges and prospects in this field were also briefly discussed.

Keywords

• cyclodextrin
• carbon nanotube
• graphene
• hollow carbon sphere
• electroanalytical chemistry