Study of morphological, microstructural, and chlorpyrifos-sensing properties of aluminum-incorporated ZnO nanowires

Abstract

In this research work, an attempt has been made for the detection of chlorpyrifos by the incorporation of aluminum dopant into hydrothermally grown zinc oxide nanowires. Zinc oxide nanowires are synthesized by custom-designed limited volume heating technique and aluminum dopants are incorporated into nanowires by thermal treatment. The morphological characterizations of the nanowires are carried out by field emission scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. X-ray diffraction pattern has shown the evolution of the prominent c-axis (002) peak for all the samples with variation in the degrees of crystallinity. The micro-Raman analysis depicts characteristic peak related to the wurtzite structure of ZnO. Photoluminescence spectra have shown the evolution of narrow near-band-edge emission and a broad defect-related peak in the visible region. The chlorpyrifos-sensing behavior of aluminum-incorporated zinc oxide nanowires is found to be varied significantly with the chlorpyrifos dose and aluminum film thickness. The nanowires, processed at 300 °C, have shown comparatively better chlorpyrifos-sensing behavior.