Abstract
The large-scale use of hydroquinone (HQ) at industrial possesses has caused great safety concerns for plants and animals. Among different detection methods, the photoelectrochemical (PEC) method has been considered to be an ideal choice for HQ detection which especially satisfies the requirements for the on-line use or field monitoring. In this study, a series of BiPO4-graphene quantum dots (BiPO4-GQDs) nanocomposites with different feeding mass ratio of GQDs to BiPO4 have been prepared using a simple hydrothermal method. The PEC study revealed that all of the resultant BiPO4-GQDs nanocomposites were superior to individual BiPO4 nanoparticles, while BiPO4-GQDs0.1 (the feeding mass ratio of GQDs to BiPO4 = 0.1) had the best PEC performance. On basis of the enhanced PEC performance of BiPO4-GQDs0.1 and the remarked inhibition effect of HQ on its PEC behavior, we therefore fabricated a signal-off PEC sensor for sensitive HQ detection. Experimental results indicated that our proposed PEC sensor exhibited a good linear range within a concentration range from 50 nM to 3 μM and a lower detection limit of 3.4 nM at signal to noise ratio (S/N) = 3. This sensor displayed an excellent anti-interference ability to the simultaneously existed inorganic ions and some organic compounds even including the structural analogues of HQ. Moreover, good results have been achieved when this sensor was applied to HQ determination in river water. We herein represent a novel PEC sensor for sensitive and selective detection of HQ in environmental analysis, especially for those to be used directly in field monitoring or on-line detection.
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