Abstract
A simple and elegant electrochemical potentiostatic method has been described for the preparation of highly stable and electrocatalytically active bismuth nanoribbons (BiNRs). The average length and width of the BiNRs were of 100 +/- 50nm and 10 +/- 5 mu m, respectively. Here, disodium ethylene diamine tetraacetate was employed as a scaffold for the growth of BiNRs. The formation of BiNRs was confirmed by surface morphological, elemental and cyclic voltammetric analyses. The BiNRs exhibited excellent electrocatalytic ability in detecting biologically poisoning heavy metal ions such as lead and cadmium. The described BiNRs based sensor presents good linear dependence on lead and cadmium ions in the concentration range of 1-50 mu g/L for both metal ions with a detection limit of 0.104 mu g/L for lead and 0.145 mu g/L for cadmium.