Novel construction of carbon nanofiber/CuCrO2 composite for selective determination of 4-nitrophenol in environmental samples and for supercapacitor application

Subramanian Sakthinathan; Ramachandran Rajakumaran; Arjunan Karthi Keyan; Chung-Lun Yu; Chia-Fang Wu; Sivaramakrishnan Vinothini; Shen-Ming Chen; Te-Wei Chiu

doi:10.1039/d1ra02783b

Novel construction of carbon nanofiber/CuCrO₂ composite for selective determination of 4-nitrophenol in environmental samples and for supercapacitor application

RSC Adv. 2021 Apr 28;11(26):15856-15870. doi: 10.1039/d1ra02783b. eCollection 2021 Apr 26.

Authors

Subramanian Sakthinathan¹, Ramachandran Rajakumaran², Arjunan Karthi Keyan¹, Chung-Lun Yu¹, Chia-Fang Wu¹, Sivaramakrishnan Vinothini³, Shen-Ming Chen², Te-Wei Chiu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials and Mineral Resources Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology No. 1, Section 3, Chung-Hsiao East Road Taipei 106 Taiwan sakthinathan1988@gmail.com tewei@ntut.edu.tw.
² Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, National Taipei University of Technology No. 1, Section 3, Chung-Hsiao East Road Taipei 106 Taiwan.
³ Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology No. 1, Section 3, Chung-Hsiao East Road Taipei 106 Taiwan.

Abstract

A simple hydrothermal process has been used to prepare a carbon nanofiber/copper chromium dioxide (CNF/CuCrO₂) composite for the selective detection of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) and supercapacitor applications. The electrochemical sensor was developed with a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) modified with the CNF/CuCrO₂ composite by the drop-casting method. The structural formation of the prepared materials was confirmed by infrared spectroscopy, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and transmission electron microscopy. To investigate the electrochemical efficiency of the electrode, various electroanalytical techniques, namely, differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic charge-discharge tests, were employed. The GCE/CNF/CuCrO₂ modified electrode exhibited excellent electrocatalytic behavior for the detection of 4-NP under optimized conditions with a low detection limit (0.022 μM), long linear response range of 0.1-150 μM, and high sensitivity (20.02 μA μM^-1 cm^-2). The modified electrode was used for the detection of 4-NP in real samples with satisfactory results. In addition, the GCE/CNF/CuCrO₂ electrode has advantages such as stability, reproducibility, repeatability, reliability, low cost, and practical application. The CNF/CuCrO₂ composite coated Ni-foam electrodes also exhibited excellent supercapacitor efficiency, with a high specific capacitance of up to 159 F g^-1 at a current density of 5 A g^-1 and outstanding cycling stability. Hence, the CNF/CuCrO₂ composite is a suitable material for 4-NP sensors and energy storage applications.