Abstract
► Facile synthesis of Ag-doped ZnO nanoflowers. ► Morphological, structural and optical characterizations. ► Fabrication of robust, highly sensitive, reliable and reproducible phenyl hydrazine chemical sensor. ► High sensitivity (∼557.108±0.012mAcm−2 (molL−1))−1 and low detection limit (∼5nM) for the fabricated chemical sensor.
We report here the fabrication of a robust, highly sensitive, reliable and reproducible phenyl hydrazine chemical sensor using Ag-doped ZnO nanoflowers as efficient electron mediators. The Ag-doped ZnO nanoflowers were synthesized by facile hydrothermal process at low-temperature and characterized in detail in terms of their morphological, structural, compositional and optical properties. The detailed morphological and structural characterizations revealed that the synthesized nanostructures were flower-shaped, grown in very high-density, and possessed well-crystalline structure. The chemical composition confirmed the presence of Ag into the lattices of Ag-doped ZnO nanoflowers. High sensitivity of ∼557.108±0.012mAcm−2(molL−1)−1 and detection limit of ∼5×10−9molL−1 with correlation coefficient (R) of 0.97712 and short response time (10.0s) were observed for the fabricated chemical sensor towards the detection of phenyl hydrazine by using a simple current–voltage (I–V) technique. Due to high sensitivity and low-detection limit, it can be concluded that Ag-doped ZnO nanoflowers could be an effective candidate for the fabrication of phenyl hydrazine chemical sensors.