A Highly-Sensitive Picric Acid Chemical Sensor Based on ZnO Nanopeanuts

Herein, we report a facile synthesis, characterization, and electrochemical sensing application of ZnO nanopeanuts synthesized by a simple aqueous solution process and characterized by various techniques in order to confirm the compositional, morphological, structural, crystalline phase, and optical properties of the synthesized material. The detailed characterizations revealed that the synthesized material possesses a peanut-shaped morphology, dense growth, and a wurtzite hexagonal phase along with good crystal and optical properties. Further, to ascertain the useful properties of the synthesized ZnO nanopeanut as an excellent electron mediator, electrochemical sensors were fabricated based on the form of a screen printed electrode (SPE). Electrochemical and current-voltage characteristics were studied for the determination of picric acid sensing characteristics. The electrochemical sensor fabricated based on the SPE technique exhibited a reproducible and reliable sensitivity of ~1.2 μA/mM (9.23 μA·mM^-1·cm^-2), a lower limit of detection at 7.8 µM, a regression coefficient (R²) of 0.94, and good linearity over the 0.0078 mM to 10.0 mM concentration range. In addition, the sensor response was also tested using simple I-V techniques, wherein a sensitivity of 493.64 μA·mM^-1·cm^-2, an experimental Limit of detection (LOD) of 0.125 mM, and a linear dynamic range (LDR) of 1.0 mM-5.0 mM were observed for the fabricated picric acid sensor.