CuO Nanocubes Based Highly-Sensitive 4-Nitrophenol Chemical Sensor

This paper reports the fabrication of highly-sensitive, robust, reliable and reproducible 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) chemical sensor based on CuO nanocubes. The CuO nanocubes were synthesized by facile low-temperature hydrothermal process and characterized in detail for their morphological, structural aid optical properties. The morphological studies revealed that the as-grown nanocubes of CuO are grown in high-density. The structural characterizations confirmed the nanocrystalline nature and monoclinic structure for as-synthesized nanocubes. The optical property of CuO nanocubes exhibits indirect and direct band gap values examined by UV-Vis. spectroscopy at room-temperature. The as-synthesized CuO nanocubes were used as efficient electron mediators for the fabrication of 4-nitrophenol chemical sensor by simple I-V technique. High-sensitivity of similar to 132.84 +/- 0.02 mA.cm(-2).(mol L-1)(-1) and detection limit of similar to 5 x 10(-9) mol L-1 in a short response time of similar to 10.0 s were observed for the fabricated 4-nitrophenol sensor. This work shows that simply synthesized CuO nanostructures have great potential for the fabrication of efficient and reliable chemical sensors.