Abstract
This paper reports a facile synthesis, characterization and hydrazine chemical sensor applications of alpha-Fe2O3 nanoparticles (NPs). These NPs were synthesized by simple hydrothermal process at low-temperature of 130 degrees C and characterized in detail in terms of their morphological, structural and compositional properties. The detailed characterization revealed that the as-synthesized nanoparticles were well crystalline and possess rhombohedral alpha-Fe2O3 structure. The as-synthesized alpha-Fe2O3 NPs were used as efficient electron mediators for the fabrication of hydrazine chemical sensor which exhibits high sensitivity and low-detection limit. The obtained sensitivity and detection limit of the fabricated chemical sensor was found to be similar to 1.59 mu A/cm(2), mu M and 3.84 mu M, respectively. Importantly, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first report in which alpha-Fe2O3 was used as an electron mediator for the fabrication of amperometric chemical sensor. Therefore, this work shows that alpha-Fe2O3 NPs synthesized by simply method can be used for the fabrication of robust hydrazine chemical sensors.