Facile hydrothermal synthesis NiHPO3·H2O nanorods, influencing factors, and transformation toward Ni–NiO composite nanostructures, catalytic properties and application in sensing for glucose

Abstract

We designed a direct and simple route, based on a thermal decomposition method under normal atmospheric pressure for obtained Ni–NiO nanorods from NiHPO3·H2O nanorods structures, the uniform precursor. This process includes the synthesis of the precursor through a facile hydrothermal approach and subsequently thermal decomposition of the precursor under air atmosphere. Some factors influencing the precursor of the NiHPO3·H2O nanorods structures were systematically investigated. After the heat treatment, the as-synthesized Ni–NiO nanorods with a well retained structure and the catalytic performance were investigated. It was found that the Ni–NiO nanorods exhibited good catalytic activity for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP) in excess NaBH4 solution. Furthermore, experiments showed that the as-prepared Ni–NiO nanorods presented high electrochemical response with low detection limit (0.254 μM), wide linear range (0.25–1.75 mM) (R2 = 0.99918) and high selectivity in 0.1 mol L−1 NaOH solution and could be used as an electrochemical sensor for the detection of glucose.