Selective hydrazine sensor fabrication with facile low-dimensional Fe2O3/CeO2 nanocubes

Abstract

A facile hydrothermal technique was applied to prepare doped Fe₂O₃/CeO₂ nanocubes (NCs) in alkaline medium at low temperature. The calcined NCs were characterized by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), ultraviolet visible spectroscopy (UV/vis), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), and powder X-ray diffraction (XRD). A chemical sensor was fabricated with a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) modified by deposition of a uniform thin layer of NCs film. The fabricated chemical sensor was used successfully to detect hydrazine selectively by a reliable electrochemical method at lower potential. The sensor's analytical performances, including good sensitivity (0.1275 μA μM⁻¹ cm⁻²), low detection limit (7.45 ± 0.37 pM), broad linear dynamic range (0.02 μM–0.02 M), precious reproducibility, low limit of quantification (0.22 ± 0.01 μM) and long-term stability, were investigated. An efficient hydrazine chemical sensor based on Fe₂O₃/CeO₂ NCs/binder/GCE was developed and performed well in terms of analytical sensing performances as well as being validated for environmental and extracted real samples.