Abstract: The present work describes a typical functionalized fullerene (C60)-based imprinted polymer composite for the modification of pencil graphite electrode. This employed 2,4,6-trisacrylamido-1,3,5-triazine as a functional monomer and an antimalarial drug, primaquine, as a template for the molecular imprinting with the GÇ£surface grafting-fromGÇØ approach. Herein, functionalized fullerene actually served as a potential nanomediator to shuttle electron between the recognition sites and the electrode. Such modification induced electrocatalytic action and thereby greatly amplified the electrode kinetics with decreasing oxidation overpotential. This resulted in an increase of differential pulse anodic stripping current (~5 fold) as compared to the corresponding traditionally imprinted polymer modified electrode. The template-monomer (1:2) stoichiometry was optimized applying density functional theory at B3LYP/6-31 + G (d, p) level. The proposed sensor was validated with the complex matrices of human blood plasma, urine, and pharmaceutics, without any matrix effect and cross-reactivity. A perfect linearity in the current-concentration profile was observed for primaquine in the wide concentration ranges: 2.7-848.5, 4.2-827.4, 3.4-795.2, and 4.8-803.2 nM for aqueous, blood plasma, urine, and pharmaceutical samples, respectively. The detection limit was observed to be as low as 0.80 nM (S/N = 3), in the aqueous environment
Template and target information: primaquine