Selective and sensitive 4-Aminophenol chemical sensor development based on low-dimensional Ge-doped ZnO nanocomposites by electrochemical method

Abstract

The present study aims to fabricate and investigate the germanium-doped zinc oxide (Ge/ZnO) composite nanoparticles (NPs) coated gassy carbon electrode (GCE) sensor by electrochemical method. The performances including sensitivity, stability, lower detection limit, reliability, and reproducibility were evaluated in details at room conditions. Electrochemical method was employed to deposit Ge/ZnO NPs on flat GCE in the presence of 5% nafion (conducting binders) for fabricating the sensor matrix, which exhibited the fast response towards hazardous 4-Aminophenol (4AP) chemical. UV/vis, FT-IR, EDS, XRD, FESEM, and XPS were used to characterize the prepared Ge/ZnO NPs. Electrochemical method is employed to investigate the current response in detecting 4AP chemical at room conditions. Results show that the current response of Ge/ZnO NPs coated GCE sensor precisely changes, which directly depended on the target concentration as well as the type of the target analyte existed in solution. The sensitivity and detection limit are calculated from the slope of calibration curve by considering the active surface area of fabricated electrode, which are found as 0.5063 µA cm−2 µM−1 and 0.5925 ± 0.02 nM respectively. The measured performances are found to be good and in some cases, better than those of other sensor materials reported in literatures. The developed chemical sensors could be efficiently applied to detect the phenolic derivatives for green environment by ensuring safety in broader scales.