Voltammetric sensor for indole-3-lactic acid determination featuring N-doped core-shell Ir@Mo@Ni aerogels on screen printed carbon electrode Dieudonne Tanue Nde a,b,*,1 , Saood Ali b,1 , Jean Pierre Ndabakuranye c , Imran Hasan d , Theophile Niyitanga a,* , Arghya Narayan Banerjee b,** , Sang Woo Joo b,** a School of Materials Science and Engineering, Yeungnam University, 280 Daehak-Ro, Gyeongsan 38541, South Korea b School of Mechanical Engineering, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan 38541, Republic of Korea c Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering RMIT University, Australia d Department of Chemistry, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia G R A P H I C A L ABSTRACT A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Voltammetric sensor Aerogel Tri-metallic Ir@Mo@Ni Indole-3-lactic acid ABSTRACT The excessive consumption of liquor accounts for 5.3 % annual death and indole-3-lactic acid has been identified as a possible biomarker for mentally disorder patients arising from alcohol abuse. A highly sensitive and selective voltammetric sensing platform is proposed composed of N-doped core-shell Ir@Mo@Ni aerogel prepared via a facile in situ spontaneous gelation route using one-step NaBH 4 reduction technique anchored on a cost-effective screen-printed carbon electrode (SPCE) for determination of indole-3-lactic acid (ILA) levels in buffer and serum. Prior to the analytical phase, the composite (N-Ir@Mo@Ni/SPCE) was thoroughly characterized, and different methods were used to investigate the electrochemical properties. The combination of tri-metallics resulted in improved sensing capacities in the linear range from 0.01–20 µM, with sensitivity and limits of detection of 0.162 μA/μM and 7.2 nM, respectively, towards ILA determination. Furthermore, the developed sensing platform was utilized for the analyses of ILA in human normal and alcohol use disorder patients’ serum samples. Liquid * Corresponding authors at: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Yeungnam University, 280 Daehak-Ro, Gyeongsan 38541, South Korea. ** Corresponding authors. E-mail addresses: ndehdieudonne@gmail.com (D.T. Nde), t.niyitanga@yu.ac.kr (T. Niyitanga), arghya@ynu.ac.kr (A.N. Banerjee), swj@yu.ac.kr (S.W. Joo). 1 These authors contributed equally to this work. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/colsurfa https://doi.org/10.1016/j.colsurfa.2024.135431 Received 2 August 2024; Received in revised form 12 September 2024; Accepted 22 September 2024 Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects 704 (2025) 135431 Available online 26 September 2024 0927-7757/© 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.