Abstract
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•CdO/CNT nanocomposites prepared by wet-chemical method.•Fabricated highly sensitive m-tolyl hydrazine chemi-sensor.•Chemi-sensor exhibits the lowest detection limit.•Practically analyzed the real environmental samples.•Effective chemical sensor for health care and environmental fields.
In this approach, the wet-chemical (co-precipitation) technique was used to prepare the cadmium oxide (CdO) nanoparticles (NPs) decorated with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNT) at low temperature. The powder XDR, UV–vis, TEM, XPS, and FTIR spectroscopy were used for detail characterization of the synthesized CdO/CNT nanocomposite (NCs). A thin layer of CdO/CNT NCs was deposited onto a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) with conducting coating binder to obtain a chemical sensor which was subsequently used to detect m-tolyl hydrazine hydrochloride (m-THyd) in buffer medium by electrochemical approach for environmental safety. The proposed m-THyd chemical sensor exhibited long-term stability, good selectivity, broad linear dynamic range, lower detection limit, and enhanced electrochemical response. The calibration curve of the current vs concentration of m-THyd was found to be linear (r2 = 0.9903) over the linear dynamic range (LDR) of 0.01 nM to 0.1 mM. The sensitivity (25.7911 μA μM cm−2) of chemical sensor was calculated from the slope of calibration curve and surface area of GCE (0.0316 cm2) and the detection limit (4.0 ± 0.2 pM) was estimated from the signal to noise ratio at 3. These preliminary results suggest that the newly developed CdO/CNT NCs nanocomposite could be promising electrochemical sensors for the detection of hazardous toxins to clean the environment in broad scales.