This work describes controllable preparation of gold nanoparticles on glassy carbon electrodes by using the seed mediated growth method, which contains two steps, namely, nanoseeds attachment and nanocrystals growth. The size and the dispersion of gold nanoparticles grown on glassy carbon electrodes could be easily tuned through the growth time based on results of field-emission scanning electron microscopy. Excellent electrochemical catalytic characteristics for glucose oxidation were observed for the gold nanoparticles modified glassy carbon electrodes (AuNPs/GC), resulting from the extended active surface area provided by the dense gold nanoparticles attached. It exhibited a wide linear range from 0.1 mM to 25 mM with the sensitivity of 87.5 mu A cm(-2) mM(-1) and low detection limit down to 0.05 mM for the sensing of glucose. The common interfering species such as chloride ion, ascorbic acid, uric acid and 4-acetamidophenol were verified having no interference effect on the detection of glucose. It is demonstrated that the seed mediated method is one of the facile approaches for fabricating Au nanoparticles modified substrates, which could work as one kind of promising electrode materials for the glucose nonenzymatic sensing. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.