Recently, the performance of aptamer-based sensors has been greatly improved by the combination of aptamers with novel nanomaterials. Herein, the hierarchical porous 3D-NiCo2O4 nanowires, shelled with a thin layer of Ndoped carbon (l) with sea-urchin-like morphology, were successfully prepared by a facile protocol. The 3D NC@NiCo2O4 NWs combine the electrochemical advantages of Ni and Co species by exhibiting higher specific capacitance and active sites and also much higher conductivity. More significantly, the carbon layer improves the stability, conductivity and porosity of the nanowires. Benefiting from such a hierarchical structure, 3D NC@NiCo2O4 NWs fit a large amount of surface area in a very small space. Therefore, the 3D N-C@NiCo2O4 NWs was applied in order to increase the hepatitis C virus core antigen (HCV) aptamer load on the electrode that significantly increased the sensitivity of the sensor. The electrochemical evaluations were proved that there exists a very good linear relationship between the charge transfer resistance (Rct) and HCV contents in the range of 0.5 fg mL− 1 to 0.12 pg mL− 1 with a low detection limit of 0.16 fg mL− 1 . Besides, it was in real biological samples that the aptasensor experienced superior detection recoveries which illustrated its high detection performance and feasibility for practicability.
