Issue 12, 2019

One-step wet-chemical synthesis of ternary ZnO/CuO/Co3O4 nanoparticles for sensitive and selective melamine sensor development

Abstract

Using one-step wet-chemically synthesized ternary ZnO/CuO/Co3O4 nanoparticles (NPs), a sensitive chemical sensor was developed to detect melamine selectively using an electrochemical approach in a phosphate buffer solution. The calcined ZnO/CuO/Co3O4 NPs were investigated using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), ultraviolet visible spectroscopy (UV-vis), and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). To fabricate the melamine sensor, a slurry of NPs in ethanol was deposited as a uniform thin layer on a glassy carbon electrode (GCE). The calibration curve of the proposed melamine sensor in the form of current versus concentration (in logarithmic scale) plot is found to be linear over a melamine concentration range of 0.05 nM–0.05 mM. The sensitivity of the sensor is very good (36.98 μA μM−1 cm−2) and the detection limit is very low (9.7 ± 0.5 pM). The melamine sensor with active ZnO/CuO/Co3O4 NPs shows good reliability, precise reproducibility and a short response time in sensing performances. The developed ternary metal oxide nanoparticle based sensor is a new introduction in sensor technology for determining melamine in environmental samples reliably.

Graphical abstract: One-step wet-chemical synthesis of ternary ZnO/CuO/Co3O4 nanoparticles for sensitive and selective melamine sensor development

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
17 Dec 2018
Accepted
15 Feb 2019
First published
15 Feb 2019

New J. Chem., 2019,43, 4849-4858

One-step wet-chemical synthesis of ternary ZnO/CuO/Co3O4 nanoparticles for sensitive and selective melamine sensor development

M. M. Alam, A. M. Asiri, M. T. Uddin, Inamuddin, M. A. Islam, Md. R. Awual and M. M. Rahman, New J. Chem., 2019, 43, 4849 DOI: 10.1039/C8NJ06361C

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