Growth of diazonium-functionalized ZnO nanoflakes on flexible carbon cloth for electrochemical sensing of acetone in the liquid phase

Azhar Abbas; Seemal Mansoor; Mian Hasnain Nawaz; Aqif Anwar Chaudhry; Kashif Ijaz; Sara Riaz; Akhtar Hayat

doi:10.1039/d3ra01268a

Growth of diazonium-functionalized ZnO nanoflakes on flexible carbon cloth for electrochemical sensing of acetone in the liquid phase

RSC Adv. 2023 Apr 13;13(17):11537-11545. doi: 10.1039/d3ra01268a. eCollection 2023 Apr 11.

Authors

Azhar Abbas¹, Seemal Mansoor², Mian Hasnain Nawaz², Aqif Anwar Chaudhry², Kashif Ijaz², Sara Riaz³, Akhtar Hayat²

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Chemistry, University of Sargodha Sargodha 40100 Pakistan.
² Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Biomedical Materials (IRCBM), COMSATS University Islamabad Lahore Campus Lahore 54000 Pakistan akhtarhayat@cuilahore.edu.pk.
³ Department of Chemistry, COMSATS University Islamabad Lahore Campus Lahore 54000 Pakistan sarahasnain@cuilahore.edu.pk.

Abstract

Simple detection of acetone is indispensable due to its health and environmental concerns. Surface-modified electrodes are promising for the detection of acetone. In the present study, the facile fabrication of ZnO nanoflakes on carbon cloth (CC) is reported. The electrode was fabricated by decorating the CC with ZnO nanoparticles (ZnO NPs), followed by the hydrothermal treatment and modification with diazonium salt using linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) forming ZnO nanoflakes (ZnO NFs) on ZnO NPs/CC. The as-prepared ZnO/CC electrode was used for the detection of acetone at room temperature using cyclic voltammetry. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analyses were used for the chemical and physical characterization of the CC before and after each modification step. The obtained data manifested that ZnO NFs functionalized with diazonium salt increased the roughness of the CC surface, which was advantageous to promote the interaction between CC and acetone target. The modified sensing platform showed excellent performance in terms of the wide working range (0.1-2000 ppm) and low detection limit (0.03 ppm), making it a promising and cost-effective sensor of acetone in the liquid phase.