Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)-capped Pt nanocubes with superior peroxidase-like activity

Abstract

Peroxidase mimics composed of inorganic nanoparticles are expected to circumvent the inherent difficulties of natural peroxidases, and to provide enhanced performance in important applications such as diagnosis and imaging. Despite the reports of a variety of peroxidase mimics in the past decade, very limited progress has been made on improving their catalytic efficiency. The catalytic efficiencies of most previously reported mimics are only up to one order of magnitude higher than those of natural peroxidases. In this work, we demonstrate a highly efficient peroxidase-polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)-capped Pt nanocubes of sub-10 nm in size. These PVP-capped Pt cubes are ≈200-fold more active than the natural counterparts and exhibit a record-high specific catalytic efficiency. In addition to the superior efficiency, the new mimic shows several other promising features, including excellent stabilities, well-controlled uniformity in both size and shape, controllable sizes, and facile and scalable production.