Accurate determination of glucose is of considerable importance in diverse fields such as clinical diagnostics, biotechnology, and food industry. A low-cost and easy to scale-up approach has been developed for the preparation of nickel-copper oxide nanowires (Ni-CuO NWs) with hierarchical structures comprising porous NiO substrate and CuO nanowires. The successfully prepared Ni-CuO NWs were exploited as non-enzymatic electrochemical sensing probes for the reliable detection of glucose. Electrochemical measurements such as cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometry (CA) illustrated that the Ni-CuO NWs exhibited excellent electrochemical performance toward glucose oxidation with a superior sensitivity of 5610.6 mu A mM(-1) cm(-2), a low detection limit of 0.07 mu M, a wide linear range from 0.2 to 3.0 mM, and a good selectivity. This was attributed to the synergetic effect of the hierarchical structures and active Ni(OH)(2) surface species in Ni-CuO NWs. The rational design of the metal oxide composites provided an efficient strategy for the fabrication of electrochemical non-enzymatic sensors. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.