Environment-friendly and highly sensitive dichloromethane chemical sensor fabricated with ZnO nanopyramids-modified electrode

The effective detection of dichloromethane (DCM) was performed by hexagonal zinc oxide (ZnO) nanopyramids (NPys) modified disposable screen printed electrode (SPE) for the fabrication of reproducible, highly sensitive and reliable chemical sensors. ZnO NPys were synthesized by a simple hydrothermal procedure using zinc acetate as precursor and oleylamine as surfactant. Well-grown hexagonal pyramids like structures were incurred in a high aspect ratio. The optical, structural and the compositional characterizations confirmed a good quality and crystallinity possessing a wide band gap (E_g) of ∼3.29 eV of ZnO NPys. The hexagonal ZnO NPys modified disposable SPE chemical sensor showed a good sensing behavior with a sensitivity of ∼293.5 µA/µM/cm² and limit of detection (LOD) of ∼17.3 µM toward the detection of DCM. The electrochemical sensor based on hexagonal ZnO NPys modified disposable SPE demonstrated an excellent linearity in the range of ∼100 nM to 200 µM and a good retention coefficient (R) of ∼0.982055 which resulted in good sensing properties.