Sensitive and selective m-tolyl hydrazine chemical sensor development based on CdO nanomaterial decorated multi-walled carbon nanotubes

In this approach, the wet-chemical (co-precipitation) technique was used to prepare the cadmium oxide(CdO) nanoparticles (NPs) decorated with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNT) at low temperature. Thepowder XDR, UV–vis, TEM, XPS, and FTIR spectroscopy were used for detail characterization of thesynthesized CdO/CNT nanocomposite (NCs). A thin layer of CdO/CNT NCs was deposited onto a glassycarbon electrode (GCE) with conducting coating binder to obtain a chemical sensor which wassubsequently used to detect m-tolyl hydrazine hydrochloride (m-THyd) in buffer medium byelectrochemical approach for environmental safety. The proposed m-THyd chemical sensor exhibitedlong-term stability, good selectivity, broad linear dynamic range, lower detection limit, and enhancedelectrochemical response. The calibration curve of the current vs concentration of m-THyd was found tobe linear (r2 = 0.9903) over the linear dynamic range (LDR) of 0.01 nM to 0.1 mM. The sensitivity(25.7911 mA mM cm 2) of chemical sensor was calculated from the slope of calibration curve and surfacearea of GCE (0.0316 cm2) and the detection limit (4.0 0.2 pM) was estimated from the signal to noiseratio at 3. These preliminary results suggest that the newly developed CdO/CNT NCs nanocompositecould be promising electrochemical sensors for the detection of hazardous toxins to clean theenvironment in broad scales.