Synthesis of tin oxide (SnO2) for the fabrication of voltammetric hydrazine sensor

Abstract

This work demonstrates the synthesis of tin oxide (SnO2) using simple approaches. The structural, composition, morphology and surface area properties of the SnO2 were studied by using PXRD, EDS, FESEM and BET methods. The FESEM reveal that the synthesized SnO2 possesses a hexagonal like shape structure. Moreover, SnO2 has good surface area of 43.5 m2/g confirmed by BET analysis. Further, we have used gold electrode (GE) as working substrate to fabricate the hydrazine sensor. In this regard, ink of SnO2 was prepared and drop-casted on the active surface of GE. The modified electrode (SnO2-GE) was utilized as hydrazine sensor using three electrode assembly system. The cyclic voltammogram (CV) and linear sweep voltammogram (LSV) responses of the SnO2-GE were obtained in presence of hydrazine to determine the performance of the fabricated SnO2-GE. The fabricated electrode (SnO2-GE) showed a rapid electronic communication towards hydrazine with a low detection limit (LOD) of 2.47 μM and a sensitivity of 0.43 μAμM−1cm−2 using CV, whereas an improved LOD of 0.17 μM with sensitivity of 0.39 μAμM−1cm−2 was obtained by using LSV. The modified SnO2-GE shows excellent performance in terms of low detection limit, cyclic repeatability and cyclic stability.